What I'm Trying to Say
by TolkienScholar
Summary: Oneshot Collection. Season 1. No matter how worried, hurt, or exhausted he is, Dean somehow can never bring himself to be truly vulnerable with his brother. Luckily, Sam usually understands what he's trying to say.
1. Impersonal

**Disclaimer: I do not own** ** _Supernatural_** **. No copyright infringement is intended.**

* * *

 **MC4A Challenges (Retroactive):** BAON; ToS; SIN; NC; PP; SoC; FF **  
Representations:** Dean Winchester; Sam Winchester; Winchester Family; Saving People, Hunting Things; Ghost; Teasing; Pride and Stubbornness; Things Left Unsaid  
 **Word Count:** 502

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 **A/N: The concept for this fic came from something I found on Pinterest that appears to have been reblogged from Tumblr. The poster, sebastiansttan, writes, "Dean Winchester doesn't say, 'I love you.' He says..." and what follows is a bunch of pictures with quotes in which Dean shows his love through his protectiveness. It got me thinking about all the times Dean doesn't say what he really means. Enjoy, and if you feel so inclined, please leave a review!**

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 **Tag to Ep. 1x1: "Pilot"**

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Impersonal

"And I'll tell you another thing: If you screwed up my car, I'll kill you."

Even as the words come out of his mouth, Dean hates himself for saying them. It's not that he's said something wrong, because Sammy laughs, that _"I can't believe my brother's such an idiot"_ laugh he remembers from when they were kids, when he'd start making wisecracks about the spirits they were hunting to keep them both from being scared. It takes him back to a simpler, happier time.

He hates himself because it wasn't what he wanted to say. He has so many words and phrases spinning around in his head, so many things he would like to tell Sammy right now. Things like, _"That took guts, driving her in through the wall like that. I'm not sure I would ever have thought of it. I'm really proud of you."_

Or, _"Man, it's been good to have you by my side again. I've missed you."_

Or maybe, _"When I saw you in the car with that witch on top of you, I just about went ballistic. I'm surprised I didn't do something more stupid than try to shoot a ghost with a regular bullet."_

Or even just, _"Those burns on your chest—they look pretty bad. Are you sure you're okay?"_

The thing is, there was a time when he might have been able to say those things. Not that he's ever been good at sharing his feelings—he's always had a horror of "chick flick moments"—but he used to be able to talk to Sammy. They used to be close.

Now, though, he's not even sure he knows Sam anymore. Some things haven't changed: Sam's still an out-of-the-box problem solver; he still somehow remembers everything Dad taught him about hunting; he still disapproves of Dean's eating habits; he still sleeps on his back with his arms crossed over his stomach or one hand curled up in that cute little way by his head.

But other things… other things are different. He's got so much anger and resentment toward Dad, and maybe toward him, too. He's given up on finding Mom's killer, given up on her altogether. The way he talked about her—it still angers Dean. He's glad he was able to stop Sam's apology earlier, because he's not sure he's ready to forgive him yet. And then—perhaps the ultimate source of the disconnect between them—Sam's determined to be normal, to have a normal job and a normal wife and normal kids and a normal little house in a normal little suburb.

He's on a path that Dean can't follow and wouldn't want to if he could.

So with all that going on, maybe it's best to keep it impersonal. And that, he knows, is why he settles on the one sentence floating around in his head that isn't sentimental, that doesn't make him vulnerable in any way:

"If you screwed up my car, I'll kill you."

And Sammy laughs. For now, that'll have to be good enough.


	2. Mm-hmm

**Disclaimer: I do not own** ** _Supernatural_** **. No copyright infringement is intended.**

* * *

 **MC4A Challenges (Retroactive):** FPC; BAON; ToS; SIN; NC; LL; PP; SoC; NCR **  
Representations:** Dean Winchester; Sam Winchester; Winchester Family; Jessica Moore; Saving People, Hunting Things; Sarcasm; Pride & Stubbornness; College; Demon **  
Word Count:** 587

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 **Tag to Ep. 1x2: "Wendigo"**

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Mm-hmm

" _Mm-hmm"_ can mean a lot of things.

For Dean, it means, _"Yeah, actually I was planning to eat that last piece of pie, but you know what, go ahead. Now, see how much I love you?"_ Or it might mean, _"I definitely totally understand how that obscure Biblical reference you just made applies right now. Now, can we go back to sending this demon to Hell where it belongs?"_ Or even, on occasion, _"Yeah, of course I got enough sleep last night. That wasn't me you saw pacing up and down the hallway because I couldn't get that dead boy's face out of my head. You must be seeing things, Sammy."_

For Sam, it usually means something very different. It can mean, _"I hear what you're saying, but I don't believe you. I know you're lying."_ Or, _"You don't get it, do you? I'm just trying to help. Why won't you listen to me?"_ Or especially, _"We are not done talking about this, but I'll leave you alone for a little while."_

Dean has never liked Sam's definitions of _"Mm-hmm."_ They're always just a little too personal, a little too perceptive. They'll let Dean retreat into his shell, but they won't let him feel quite comfortable there. _"Mm-hmm"_ reminds him that whatever he's trying to hide, Sam probably already knows a lot more about it than he'd like him to.

Never in a billion years would he have thought he'd be using _"Mm-hmm"_ that way now. He never thought he'd need to. Sam isn't supposed to be the one shutting his brother out.

" _Perfectly okay."_ Nobody loses their girlfriend to the same supernatural fiend that killed their mother and then one week later is "perfectly okay." There's no way Sam could think he believes that crap, is there? Sure, Dean has never been the touchy-feely, _"tell me how you're doing"_ type, but he's lied about being okay enough times to know when someone else is doing it, especially his little brother. Just because he never talks about feelings doesn't mean he doesn't pay attention. He knows what's going on with Sam; he always has. He just prefers to deal with the problem instead of wasting time talking about it.

Only, this isn't a problem he can shoot a flare gun at. Not least because whatever killed his brother's girlfriend seems to be partially made of fire, but even if they can track down this thing and kill it, Sam's still not going to be okay. Jessica is gone, and Sammy is going to have to live with that pain, revenge or no. And Dean can't help him learn to do that if Sam won't even admit to him that anything is wrong. His genius brother probably knows What's-His-Face's However-Many Stages of Grief (if that's something they even teach at college), but he hasn't had to deal with loss like Dean has. True, losing your girlfriend as an adult isn't the same as losing your Mom at age four, but there's got to be some way he can help, if only Sammy would let him.

But instead, it's, _"Look, man. You're worried about me. I get it. And, thank you, but… I'm perfectly okay."_ How's he supposed to respond to that? What magic words is he supposed to say?

There's only one thing he _can_ say. Something he's said before, but never in this way, never in the way Sam does.

"Mm-hmm."

" _We are not done talking about this, but I'll leave you alone for a little while."_


	3. What Makes Me Brave

**Disclaimer: I do not own** ** _Supernatural_** **. No copyright infringement is intended.**

* * *

 **MC4A Challenges (Retroactive):** FPC; BAON; ToS; NC; LL; PP; SoC; SHoE; FF; NCR **  
Representations:** Dean Winchester; Sam Winchester; Mary Winchester; Winchester Family; Lucas Barr; Jessica Moore; Saving People, Hunting Things; Pride & Stubbornness; Role Model; Law School; Revelations; Courage **  
Word Count:** 811

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 **Tag to Ep. 1x3: "Dead in the Water"**

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What Makes Me Brave

They've talked a lot about that night. The night that sentenced them to a life on the road, never knowing a real home, never staying at one school for long, never having any idea what a "normal" life would look like. The night that turned Dad from the laughing, fun-loving father Dean claims to remember into the obsessed drill sergeant that's all Sam's ever known. The night Mom died. They've dissected every minute, gone over every detail Dad and Dean can possibly remember, inspecting their memories for anything that might provide a clue as to the identity of her killer.

But in all those conversations, there's one detail Sam is sure Dean never mentioned, something Sam's never once heard him say until this moment. He's never heard him say, "I was scared."

Sam remembers asking him one night, around age ten. It was about two years after he'd learned the truth about what happened to Mom, and he'd heard the story plenty of times by then, around the dining room table or from the back seat of the Impala. At fourteen, Dean was already turning into a tough and stoic hunter, and he talked about the events of that night with the same calm rationality as Dad, but he'd only been four at the time it happened. He couldn't have been as tough back then as he was now.

"Dean?" Sam asked. "The night Mom died—were you scared?"

Dean looked at him hard for a minute, his face impossible to read. Then he shook his head. "No, Sammy. I wasn't scared. I knew I had to be brave."

And Sam believed him. It was what he'd wanted to believe. His brother was his hero, and heroes weren't supposed to be scared. It took years for Sam to come to grips with the fact that what Dean had told him was a big fat lie.

Still, Dean has never admitted it. Just like he never admits to any other form of weakness, to being tired or depressed or in pain. Playing the tough guy is Dean's MO, and Sam has accepted that it will never be any other way.

And now this kid Lucas comes along. There's something about him that has touched Dean in a part of his soul Sam has never been able to reach. Dean's never liked kids, Sam only excepted, but there's some sort of connection between him and Lucas, born of having experienced the loss of a parent to something unnatural at an age just old enough to remember and just young enough not to understand. Somehow, that connection is enough to bring the words to Dean's lips he hasn't spoken in twenty-two years: "I was scared." It feels like a revelation, though in truth Sam has known it for a long time.

Part of what Dean told him when they were kids wasn't a lie, though—he truly had been brave that night. What Sam has never thought to wonder is where that bravery came from. Now, he has the answer: _"I know my Mom would have wanted me to be brave. I think about that every day. And I try to be brave."_ Sam has never questioned Dean's bravery, never imagined that his brother might have to look anywhere other than his own strength to find the courage he shows every single day. But all along, it's been because of Mom. It's her memory, however faint and fading it might be, that has kept him going all these years.

And maybe that's why Sam didn't keep going. Why he tried to get away from hunting, to get away from this life of hardship and misery and horror. He doesn't remember Mom, not even in the distant way Dean does, so her death doesn't motivate him like that. Maybe that's why it's only now, with Jessica's death so fresh in his mind, that Sam has finally found his own courage.

 _Jessica would have wanted me to be brave,_ he thinks. It's true. She always believed in him implicitly, never doubting that he could accomplish whatever he set his mind to. True, what he had set his mind to back then was getting into law school, not hunting down a murderous spirit, but he has a hunch that if Jess had known the truth then, if he had somehow managed to tell her and get her to believe him, she would have had just as much confidence in his hunting skills as she did in his potential to succeed as a lawyer. She would have wanted him to have the courage to keep going.

" _Brave."_ Brave has always been what Dean was. Sam's smart, he's logical, he's obstinate and rebellious, but he isn't brave. He's never had a reason to be. But now, after hearing Dean's confession to Lucas, he realizes that, maybe, finally, he does.


	4. Flight of Fear

**Disclaimer: I do not own** ** _Supernatural_** **. No copyright infringement is intended. Dialogue is reproduced from the episode.**

* * *

 **MC4A Challenges (Retroactive):** BAON; ToS; NC; PP; SoC; FF; NCR **  
Representations:** Dean Winchester; Sam Winchester; Winchester Family; Saving People, Hunting Things; Stubbornness & Pride; Role Model; Revelations; Cracked Facade; Demon **  
Word Count:** 679

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 **Tag to Ep. 1x4: "Phantom Traveler"**

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Flight of Fear

"You okay?"

Sam sees Dean make the decision to tell the truth like it's happening in slow motion. The lie is already forming—it's in the jerk of Dean's head, the tightening of his lips—but even as Sam starts to evaluate whether it's worth it to press Dean on this one, everything stops. For a moment his brother just stands there, his mouth open but no words coming out. Then he drops his defensive posture and sinks into one of sheer agitation.

"No. Not really."

"What? What's wrong?" Sam asks, less astonished by Dean's anxiety than by the fact that he's admitting to it.

Dean grimaces. "Well, I kinda have this problem with, um…" He trails off helplessly, making a motion with his hand like a child's imitation of a plane.

"Flying?"

"It's never really been an issue until now!"

"You're joking, right?"

"Do I look like I'm joking?" says Dean miserably. "Why do you think I drive everywhere, Sam?"

Sam shakes his head, incredulous. With everything they've faced, all the horrors Dean claims not to be afraid of, _this_ is the one thing his brother can't handle? But there's no time to wonder at it, no time to stand here talking at all. "All right, I'll go."

"What?"

"I'll do this one on my own."

"What, are you nuts?" Dean demands, suddenly sounding a little more like himself. "Sam, you said it yourself, that plane's gonna crash!"

"Look, Dean, we can do it together, I can do this one by myself—I'm not seeing a third option here."

"Aw, come on! Really?"

Dean shifts uncomfortably under Sam's urgent stare, his eyes darting toward the exits as if he's considering making a break for it.

"Man," he says finally, and Sam knows he's given in.

* * *

Minutes later, standing in line to buy tickets for the flight, Sam struggles to make sense of what's just happened. Dean is out at the car, trying to figure out what supplies they have that might be effective against a demon and yet still make it past airport security. Sam's willing to bet it won't be much; even the holy water won't make it through unless Dean pours out enough to get it down to three ounces. He'd wanted to make a crack about being worried Dean might not return, but he thought it might hit a little too close to home.

Through all the turmoil of Sam's life, through all the changes and uncertainties that come with chasing monsters all over the continental U. S., the one constant in Sam's life has been his brother. Ghosts, demons, spirits—Sam's seen him face them all with a grin on his face. Even as recently as this morning, Dean was telling him he doesn't have nightmares, and seeing how easily and deeply his brother sleeps, Sam almost believes him. Dean has always been unshakable—not fearless, but capable of shoving his fear down into a place so dark and so deep that it's easy for Sam to let himself think it isn't there at all.

But something's happening now that Sam doesn't understand. First it was Dean's confession to Lucas, and now this freak-out about the plane. Cracks are starting to show in his brother's carefully constructed image, and Sam isn't sure how he feels about that. If that image shatters, will he even recognize the man hiding underneath?

 _Yes,_ he thinks as he watches Dean come back into the terminal with a mostly empty duffel bag slung over his shoulder. Because terrified or not, Dean is still getting on this plane with him, and Sam knows why. There's no way in this world his brother would let him get on a doomed flight with a bloodthirsty demon and not be there by his side. Whatever else Dean might be going through, that hasn't changed. Dean is still doing what he's always done: facing down his worst nightmares for the sake of protecting his younger brother. And if Sam now knows a little more of what's going on behind his brother's bravery… well, maybe it's about time he did.


	5. Secrets Better Kept

**Disclaimer: I do not own** ** _Supernatural_** **. No copyright infringement is intended. Dialogue is reproduced from the episode.**

* * *

 **MC4A Challenges (Retroactive):** FPC; BAON; ToS; NC; PP; SoC; FF; NCR **  
Representations:** Dean Winchester; Sam Winchester; Winchester Family; Saving People, Hunting Things; Charlie; Bloody Mary; Ghost; Stubbornness & Pride; Killing; Guilt **  
Word Count:** 1825

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 **Tag to Ep. 1x5: "Bloody Mary"**

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Secrets Better Kept

The cops are most definitely a complication.

It irritates Dean that on top of all the supernatural hazards this job entails, they're also constantly having to deal with law enforcement. Technically they and the nation's finest are on the same side; the Winchesters simply happen to be infinitely more competent at their job. Seems like they ought to get some sort of special badge of their own that they can flash at crime scenes with potential paranormal activity: "Dean and Sam Winchester, professional hunters. We'll be taking over jurisdiction of this case. Thank you, your assistance is no longer required. Now go away."

Instead they have to watch out for the police on top of everything else. Evading arrest seems like a pretty mundane concern compared with the possibility of having your eyes liquefy and bleed out your skull, but as Dad always told him, no plan is complete unless it factors in both.

This plan… This plan was incomplete, Dean realizes as the storefront is suddenly flooded with bright lights. As always, the police's timing is impeccable: Sam has just said the third and final "Bloody Mary," and the vengeful ghost could be aroused at any moment. Dean briefly considers staying put and letting the police situation sort itself out, but he knows that if the cops get here before Bloody Mary does, they may never get another chance at her. Which means Sam and that Charlie girl are both dead.

"Let me check that out; you stay here. Be careful," he says, moving towards the door. "Smash anything that moves!"

Sam nods, hefting his crowbar. Dean only hopes it will be enough.

* * *

" _You know, her boyfriend killing himself, that's not really Charlie's fault," Dean observes, remembering how they left the poor girl cowering on her bed, every mirror and reflective surface covered._

 _Sam stares out the windshield at the pouring rain. "You know as well as I do, spirits don't exactly see in shades of gray, Dean. Charlie had a secret. Someone died. That's good enough for Mary."_

 _Dean purses his lips doubtfully. "I guess."_

" _You know, I've been thinking," Sam continues, "it might not be enough to just smash that mirror."_

" _Why, what do you mean?"_

" _Well, Mary's hard to pin down, right? I mean, she moves around from mirror to mirror, so who's to say that she's not gonna just keep hiding in them forever?"_

 _Dean frowns, unsure what he's driving at._

" _So, maybe, we should try to pin her down. You know, summon her to her mirror and_ then _smash it."_

" _How do you know that's gonna work?"_

" _I don't. Not for sure."_

" _Well, who's gonna summon her?" Dean asks, a hint of patient condescension in his voice. His genius brother, of all people, should remember that spirits have rules, and this "Bloody Mary's" set seems to be pretty specific: she takes victims who secretly have, directly or indirectly, been responsible for someone's death._

 _Sam stares out the window again, his eyes following the rhythmic sweep of the windshield wipers. "I will. She'll come after me."_

* * *

Sometimes lying isn't enough.

Dean has used the "boss's kid" line to great effect in the past, but it apparently doesn't work so well on cops who aren't willing to buy into the idea that an Asian guy might have adopted a White kid. Pretty racist, but then again, they might just be going by the confusion on his face when they told him the store owner's very long, very Japanese name. He quickly decides to take the more efficient, if also more illegal, route of clocking them both. He doesn't have time for this. Sammy's life is on the line.

It's much too quiet as he reenters the store, the air thick with psychic tension. He catches sight of Sammy, crouching on the floor with his face in his hands, his crowbar lying useless beside him. The cursed mirror is still behind him, black, ominous, and unbroken.

Dean seizes the crowbar he stowed on the way out and launches himself at the mirror. It shatters, showering him and Sam with shards of glass and leaving the empty frame yawning open like a black hole.

He drops to his knees. "Sammy? Sammy!" He takes his brother's head in his hands, his heart jolting as his fingers feel the warm wetness on his cheeks. His eyes. He has to see Sammy's eyes.

Slowly, his brother lets him lift up his head until they're face to face.

"It's Sam," he croaks out.

Dean laughs with relief. There's blood running down from the corners of Sam's eyes, but they're still, miraculously, intact. Never in his life has Dean been so happy to see them. "You okay?"

"Yeah."

He pulls Sam to his feet and wraps his brother's arm over his shoulders, supporting him. _It's all right,_ he thinks as they begin to move towards the door. _It's over._

Then he hears glass crunching behind him, and his senses, honed by years of experience, pick up a sudden drop in the temperature. He turns, knowing all too well exactly what he's going to see.

 _Not yet._

* * *

 _Sam won't return his gaze. Dean's known they would have to talk about this: the not sleeping, the nightmares, the screaming out Jessica's name. He's tried to give Sam space, tried to let him come to him in his own time, but this is too far. Shades of gray or not, there's no way anyone, human or spirit, could blame Sam for what happened to his girlfriend. Dean knows the gray; he's lived in the gray. And as far as he's concerned, Sammy is as white as snow._

" _Now listen to me._ It wasn't your fault. _"_

 _Sam's jaw tightens, and he gives the tiniest shake of his head._

" _If you want to blame something, then blame the thing that killed her. Or here, why don't you take a swing at me—I mean, I'm the one that dragged you away from her in the first place."_

 _That finally gets a response. "I don't blame you."_

" _Well, you shouldn't blame yourself. 'Cause there's nothing you could have done."_

" _I could've warned her."_

" _About what? You didn't know it was gonna happen!"_

 _Sam instantly shuts down again, turning back to stare out at the rain._ What have I said wrong now? _Dean wonders._

 _Still, he presses on. "And besides, all of this isn't a secret; I mean, I know all about it. It's not gonna work with Mary anyway." There it is. That's the answer. Bloody Mary exposes secrets, and no matter how convinced Sam is that he's guilty, there's still nothing Mary can do to him._

 _But Sam is still staring out the window. "No, you don't."_

" _I don't what?"_

" _You don't… know all about it." Sam glances at him. "I haven't told you everything."_

" _What are you talking about?"_

" _Well, it wouldn't really be a secret if I told you, would it?"_

 _Dean's stomach drops. He can't believe this is happening right now, can't believe that Sam is actually going to do this. "No," he says firmly. "I don't like it. It's not gonna happen. Forget it."_

" _Dean, that girl back there is going to die. Unless_ we _do something about it."_

And if somehow Bloody Mary decides you actually are guilty, then you're going to die. Unless _I_ do something about it.

" _And who knows how many more people are gonna die after that? Now we're doing this."_

 _Dean just looks at him, trying to summon up the words to stop this insanity._

" _You've_ got _to let me do this."_

* * *

No. He didn't have to. Because there was something he could have said to stop Sam. He could have said, "Let me do it."

But there are some secrets that are better kept, even between brothers.

Besides, Dean had reasoned, nothing would actually happen to Sam. He would be by his side the entire time, and the second there was a flicker of motion in the cursed mirror, he would smash it, and that would be that. No pain, no blood, just a shattered mirror and a defeated ghost and another job well done. That was the way it was supposed to go.

The dark figure shuffles toward them now, her face hidden by the swinging black curtain of her hair. Dean feels a sudden warmth behind his eyes, a tightness in his face, his chest. He struggles to stay upright, but he's fading fast. The blood clouds his vision, and he feels rather than sees Sam collapse on the ground next to him. His muscles spasm, and his head rolls uncontrollably to the side. Through a red haze, he catches a glimpse of his bloody face in a mirror propped against a chair. So this is how he is going to die, with the evidence of his guilt on his face for all the world to see.

 _Guilt…_

With a tremendous effort of will, he forces his arm to reach out, to find the edge of the mirror and pull it toward him. Slowly, he turns it so that its black reflective surface faces the decaying form of Bloody Mary.

Her shuffling gait comes to a stop, and with a deathly gasp, she raises her head. A harsh voice rips out from the mirror grasped in his shaking hands: _"You killed them. All those people._ You _killed them."_

The ghost whimpers, and suddenly her face begins to deform, her body melting until she is no more than a puddle of blood in the midst of the shattered glass. The tightness releases, and all at once Dean is able to breathe. He sits up, throwing the mirror onto the bloody remains with a crash. The room goes still and quiet.

"Hey, Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"This has gotta be like, what, 600 years bad luck?" He looks around, taking in the shattered remnants of who knows how many mirrors.

Sam chuckles weakly.

* * *

Dean peels out as he drives away from Charlie's house. She's safe from the ghost now, but she's got some old wounds that'll take time to heal. Sam's unexpected advice—to forgive herself, that sometimes bad things just happen—well, hopefully it'll do some good. More important, hopefully Sammy will take that advice himself.

"Hey, Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"Now that this is all over, I want you to tell me what that secret was."

Sam looks away for a minute, his face thoughtful. "Look," he says finally, "you're my brother. And I'd die for you. But there's some things I need to keep to myself."

Dean looks at him for a minute. He wants to insist, to demand that Sam tell him. But how can he? Sam still hasn't said anything about the blood streaming down from his eyes when Mary came out of that mirror; maybe he hasn't even made the connection. But maybe he has. And Dean really doesn't want to know.

There are some secrets that are better kept, even between brothers.


	6. Will to Survive

**Disclaimer: I do not own** ** _Supernatural_** **. No copyright infringement is intended. The title of this chapter is taken from the song "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor.**

* * *

 **MC4A Challenges (Retroactive):** BAON; ToS; NC; LL; PP; SoC; NCR **  
Representations:** Dean Winchester; Sam Winchester; John Winchester; Winchester Family; Saving People, Hunting Things; Shape Shifter; Suicide Ideation **  
Word Count:** 954

* * *

 **Tag to Ep. 1x6: "Skin"**

* * *

Will to Survive

Dean moves slowly toward the lifeless body— _his_ lifeless body—flung across two stools at the edge of the room. Two black, bloody holes in its chest assure him that the thing is dead. He looks into its eyes, blank and staring out of its motionless face. A part of him had hoped it might revert to those luminous, inhuman eyes that had been caught on the security camera, but no, these are his eyes, green and empty and dead.

"So this is what it would look like," he murmurs to himself.

All at once, he feels Sammy staring at him, and he glances up. Even beaten and bloody, his little brother still seems to see too much, and the pain in his face has nothing to do with his injuries.

Dean looks back at the shape shifter's corpse. With sudden fierceness, he yanks his amulet from its neck and tucks it away into his shirt pocket. Then he nods. Yes, this is what it would look like. He doesn't have to imagine anymore.

* * *

" _How many chances am I gonna have to see my own funeral?"_

Dean sees Sam try to smile at the joke, just the briefest, tiniest upward curl of his lips. But he knows Sam doesn't think it's funny. Truth be told, he doesn't either.

Because he has seen his own funeral, more times than he can count. It's a morbid fantasy he's built up in his mind for years.

Sometimes there's a casket, with his body lying motionless, his eyes closed, hands folded across his chest. There are wards inside, made from iron and silver, and a thin line of salt all around his body, just to be safe. Dad wants his spirit to rest in peace. Other times, Dad's even more cautious and has him cremated, although Sammy foolishly has a handful of his ashes preserved in a little box that he carries in his pocket, or in a locket he wears around his neck. And maybe Dean does kind of haunt him, but in a "guardian angel" sort of way, if there is such a thing.

How he dies is different every time. There's no shortage of monsters and fiends to envision clawing out his innards or sucking his soul from his body; he encounters a new one every week. It might be a basic run-of-the-mill ghost that gets him in the end, or perhaps he meets a bloody death at the claws of a wendigo. Maybe a demon possesses him and forces him to blow himself up. But by far the most common death he imagines, the one that has scared and fascinated him more and more as he's gotten older, is the one he inflicts on himself. It's the gun with the silver bullets he uses to blow his own brains out. It's the wickedly sharp knife he plunges into his chest. It's the cliff overlooking a rocky coast over which he drives the Impala at 90 mph, destroying himself and his beloved car along with him.

With every imagined suicide comes a new reason, and perhaps those are what change most of all. Dad's pushed him to his limit, and he feels he can't take it anymore. He's let Dad down because his reflexes were too slow, he wasn't strong enough, he misunderstood the instructions, he failed to remember something important. He's killed his latest target, but an innocent person died in the process, someone he should have been able to save. He wasn't by his brother's side when he needed him and Sammy's been hurt, nearly killed. Sam's gone away to college, and now, even with Dad, he's so, so alone.

So many reasons.

What never changes is that it's just Dad and Sam at the funeral. Who else would come? He doesn't have any friends to speak of, and there's not a single girl he's dated who truly cared that much. But it's all right. He doesn't need anyone else.

In all the scenarios where something kills him, Dad is okay. He's quiet and stern, arguing with the priest over the necessity of the wards because Dad knows things priests don't. He doesn't stay long after the ceremony is over; he immediately goes off to track down the thing that killed his son. He might spend years pursuing it, but that's all right, because as long as it's out there, he won't have to fully deal with the fact that Dean is gone.

The suicides are harder. Dad has to face up to his death, then. He can't put himself and Sammy through another twenty years of revenge seeking because there's nothing to take revenge on. The killer and the victim are lying together in the same coffin. Maybe Dad will realize that, in many ways, he drove him to it; maybe he won't. Dean is never sure which he wants. Either way, he knows Dad will grieve. Not as much as for Mom, perhaps, but he will grieve.

But Sammy… This is the part that always hurts the most. Because Sammy won't just grieve; he'll be devastated. Dean's death will shatter Sammy's world into a million pieces, and he will never—especially if Dean kills himself—never be able to put it back together again. Stupid, screwed up, worthless failure that he is, he's all Sammy's got.

And in the end, that's the only thing that makes him un-cock the gun, put down the knife, switch off the car.

But it's never stopped him from imagining. Not till now. Not till he's seen his own chest riddled with bullet holes and his empty eyes staring at nothing. Not till he's seen how Sammy looked after seeing those things.

Suddenly, he never wants to imagine them again.


	7. College Material

**Disclaimer: I do not own** ** _Supernatural_** **. No copyright infringement is intended.**

* * *

 **MC4A Challenges (Retroactive):** BAON; ToS; NC; LL; PP; SHoE **  
Representations:** Dean Winchester; Sam Winchester; Winchester Family; Saving People, Hunting Things; College; Book Smart vs. Street Smart **  
Word Count:**

* * *

 **A/N: This one is based on something else I found on Pinterest. There's no original poster given, and the entire thing is written in hashtags, but I thought it showed some really profound insight into Dean's character. The post is tagged to Ep. 1x4: "Phantom Traveler" and shows the scene where Dean is using an EMF meter he designed from a "busted-up old Walkman." The poster points out that Dean is actually a genius, but he sees himself as a "grunt" because he probably never had a teacher who gave him a real chance. Having moved around so much, and likely getting into fights as a kid to protect Sammy from bullies or (let's be honest) over girls, his record isn't great, and his teachers might have judged him based on that. Eventually, he stopped trying and just accepted that Sam was the smart one and he was stupid.**

 **As a teacher myself, this was a really hard chapter to write. I just want so badly now to go back and be that teacher who gave Dean a chance. Because no child should ever feel like this.**

* * *

 **Tag to Ep. 1x7: "Hook Man"**

* * *

College Material

So this is college. It's crazy how a place can be right up Dean's alley and at the same time so completely outside his comfort zone. The frat party where he waits around for Sam is a scene that might have been made-to-order just for him—beer by the bucket load, hot sorority chicks by the dozen… _Yes,_ he thinks with a grin, _I'd have fit into this side of college just fine._

A thought pops into his head, a small, mean little thought he immediately crushes into a ball and shoves to the back of his mind with all the other bits of jealousy and resentment he's built up over the years: _Maybe this is how Sammy spent his time at college. Maybe he's not such a perfect little genius after all._ It's a stupid thought, anyway; he knows Sam better than that. His geek brother spent all his time in the library, of course. Sam confirms as much as soon as he shows up, bringing with him exactly the information they need to decipher the Hook Man's connection to Lori Sorenson. Dean had expected no less.

For him, on the other hand, this library is starting to feel like a death trap. First it was the mountain of arrest records, and now this endless paper trail trying to track down Karns's hook. They've been at it for hours, but Sam barely seems to have noticed; he's still sitting there patiently, poring over that old book as though it isn't a massive waste of their time. Dean's eyes are burning, and his brain has long since stopped being able to make sense of the tangled sums and records in his own tome. Ten more minutes of breathing book dust and he'll suffocate. It's sheer luck that his eyes happen to fall on the right part of the page— _"Karns, Jacob: Personal Effects, Disposition Thereof"_ —and when that ends up sending them off on another search through the church records, it's all he can do not to flip the table. How did Sammy survive four years of this torture? He'd have been lucky to make it four days.

" _You don't have to be a college graduate to be a genius."_ That's what he told Sam the other night. And he believes it, partly; he knows it's true of Dad at least. Of course, the rock salt shells Sam was admiring at the time were entirely his own invention, but that wasn't genius, just common sense with a little creativity thrown in. Nothing to sneeze at, but not exactly college material, either. _He's_ not exactly college material. Because Sammy's always been the smart one, and they both know it.

Dean was the kid teachers whispered about in the lounge at lunch. Teachers always said they loved all their students equally and believed everyone had the potential to succeed, but Dean figured out by the third grade that that was bullcrap. The teacher had you pegged before you ever walked into her classroom, and there wasn't a thing in the world you could do to change that. No point in telling her that all those suspensions on your record are for fighting kids who were bullying your little brother. No way to even _try_ to explain that you've switched schools so much because your Dad moves all over the country fighting monsters, not because you're such a bad student. Not worth it to tell her that you don't hate reading because you're stupid, you hate it because you're not good at sitting still, and taking away that pencil grip you were playing with actually makes it harder to focus, not easier.

So he got stuck in the remedial classes, doing the same stuff over and over and over until any love of learning he might once have had shriveled up and died, and he became exactly what they all thought he was: lazy, careless, rebellious, disrespectful of authority. He spent most of middle school in detention and most of high school goofing off in the back of the classroom, generally with one or more of the cheerleaders. He skated by on _C_ s and _D_ s, and when an _F_ cropped up now and again, he didn't sweat it too much. There came a point when he could no longer help Sammy with his homework, and that bothered him a lot more than the fact that he could barely do his own, but hunting and training offered more than enough excuses to avoid having to show his ignorance. Besides, Sam didn't really need his help anyway. He graduated only two years ahead of Sammy, having been held back in the third and sixth grade, and managed to miss his appointment with the guidance counselor enough times that she eventually forgot about him. She was probably no more eager to tell him he didn't have much of a future than he was eager to hear it, anyway. College was never on the table. Neither was any career they would tell you about at a school.

He's a hunter. That's all he's good at, and it's all he'll ever be good for.

And so, with the Hook Man defeated and Sammy all bandaged up and bundled back into the car, he's ready to shake the dust of this college town off his tires and head out to find another hunt.


	8. It's Always the Same

**Disclaimer: I do not own** ** _Supernatural_** **. No copyright infringement is intended. The title of this chapter is a reference to the song "That's All" by Genesis. Note: The dialogue in the final scene is reproduced from the episode.**

* * *

 **MC4A Challenges (Retroactive):** BAON; ToS; NC; LL; PP; SoC; SHoE; FF; NCR **  
Representations:** Dean Winchester; Sam Winchester; John Winchester; Winchester Family; Saving People, Hunting Things; Poltergeist; Verbal/Emotional Abuse; Apologies & Empty Promises; What Is Normal? **  
Word Count:** 3188

* * *

 **Tag to Ep. 1x8: "Bugs"**

* * *

It's Always the Same

People always get the brothers' roles reversed. Ask anyone they've ever worked with on a job, any teacher they had when they were kids, any of the few childhood friends they had besides each other, and they would all tell you that Dean is the fighter and Sam is the peacemaker. And in one sense, they're right: Dean is the one who's ready to start throwing punches whenever negotiations go south, while Sam turns on the charm and brings out the puppy dog eyes; it was Dean's school record that was riddled with suspensions for fighting. There's no denying that Dean is overprotective or that he tends to choose the easiest solution to a problem, even if it involves violence.

But Sam knows the truth: Dean hates conflict. When they come home at the end of the day, when the schoolbooks are put away and the weapons are packed up, it isn't Dean who's cruising for a fight. It's Sam.

There's a look Dean gets whenever Dad and Sam start arguing again, when a disagreement over a minor issue escalates into the bitter accusations and hateful retorts, and then the cursing, and then the shouting and screaming six inches from each other's faces that is probably the closest Sam's been to Dad in physical proximity in years. It's this sort of pained confusion, like Dad and Sam are the broken halves of a whole that ought to fit together and yet, for some unfathomable reason, don't. Again and again Dean throws himself into the breach, trying to be the tape, or the glue, or the thread, or the nails that will hold the two of them together, but they inevitably fall apart again. And when they do, it hurts Dean more than it does either of them.

* * *

"Sam, you know perfectly well we're going hunting tonight. You'll just have to call and tell Dustin you can't come."

"Dad, I told him three weeks ago I'd be there, and this hunt just came up yesterday. It's a prior commitment."

"I'm sure Dustin can understand that family comes first."

Sam stared up at Dad in disgust, unwilling to dignify that with an answer. "Family comes first" was just Dad's way of saying they all did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it, which somehow always conflicted with anything Sam wanted to do.

"What's a group of sixth graders going to do that's so much more important than the job, anyway?" Dad said.

"Hang out," Sam answered. "Eat pizza. Play video games. Do normal stuff like normal kids whose families aren't freaks."

"Normal kids have moms who weren't killed by—"

"I'm not the only kid in the world who's ever lost a parent, okay? Dustin doesn't have a dad. Neither does Will. You don't see them spending their Friday nights off on some—"

"Dustin's and Will's parents are divorced, Sam. It's not the same thing. Us Winchesters, we've got unfinished business with—"

"Oh, so you've finally found the thing that killed Mom? We're getting our revenge tonight, is that it?"

Dad sighed. "Every evil thing we kill—"

"Just leads to the next thing, and the next thing, and the next. It never has anything to do with Mom, and it never ends. You're obsessed."

"Would you rather I was blind to it? Knowing what's out there all around us, would you rather we just keep our eyes closed?"

"Maybe! If that's what it takes for me to have one night of fun with my friends!"

The kitchen door banged open, and Dean came in with his arms full. "Hey, Dad, I got the extra salt and lighter fluid. Did you get a chance to—" He trailed off as he took in the confrontation before him. His face got that look, the one that made Sam want so badly to stop fighting with Dad just to keep his brother from looking so hurt and confused anymore. But it always seemed like by the time Sam saw it, he was in too deep to turn back.

"What's going on?" Dean asked, his voice quiet and brittle.

"Sammy is abandoning us tonight," said Dad.

"It's not like that," Sam protested. "It's Dustin's birthday, and he asked me and the other guys weeks ago if we could come spend the night at his house and play video games. I already told him I'd be there; it's not my fault Dad found a new hunt at the last minute."

Dean looked hard at him, and Sam could read the lack of understanding in his eyes. At sixteen, Dean had just gotten his driver's license, giving him a level of freedom that Sam could only dream about, and yet it never even seemed to have occurred to him to try to establish some independence from Dad. Dean rarely had friends at all, and he never put them ahead of family business. But this was important to Sam, and he hoped his brother could see that, even if it didn't make sense to him.

"It's okay, Dad," Dean said after what seemed like a long time. "You and I can handle this one. We could let Sammy off the hook tonight."

"It's a poltergeist, Dean," Dad replied. "It's gonna take all of us."

"You and I have done poltergeists on our own."

"Yes, and you got a concussion last time. What about it, Sammy? Are you willing to bear the responsibility if Dean gets hurt because you weren't there to help?"

"Dad, that's not fair," Dean said sharply, taking a step closer to Sam.

"And what about Sammy staying at someone else's house tonight?" Dad went on. "I suppose Dustin's family salts all the windows and doors before they go to bed?"

"Of course not," Sam muttered under his breath. "They're not weirdos."

"They're not prepared. They don't know what's out there, so they're not safe. And if you go over there tonight, you won't be either."

"Or maybe I'll be safer than usual, considering I'll be away from our wacked-out, demon-chasing family!"

Dad let out a string of curses at him. Dean flinched, but Sam didn't move a muscle. He'd heard it all; there was nothing Dad could say to touch him anymore.

"Fine," Dad growled at last. "Do what you want. Go if it's so important to you. Goof off, have fun. Dean and I will be out doing our job. Just know that you're making it more dangerous for us." He stalked out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind him.

Sam glared after him, his hands still balled into fists. He'd won.

Dean set his supplies down on the table and sank into a chair, looking worn out. "You're really not coming with us, Sammy?" he asked. His tone was carefully neutral, but it still made Sam feel guiltier than the entire conversation with Dad.

"I promised Dustin," he answered a little defensively. "And anyway, what's wrong with being normal for one night?"

Dean sighed. Then he took a container of salt from one of the bags and held it out towards him. "Take this with you then, okay? Use it to make a line around your sleeping bag. At least then you'll have a little bit of protection."

Sam rolled his eyes. He'd made every effort _not_ to let his friends in this town know how weird his family was; no way was he going to ruin it now by salting his sleeping bag. Still, he took the container. As usual, his brother just wanted him to be safe.

* * *

"Upstairs or down?" asked Dad.

"I'll take upstairs," Dean replied.

Dad nodded. "Okay. Don't do anything until you've laid down the salt lines. The second it senses what you're trying to do, it'll attack."

"I know, Dad." Dean hefted the duffel bag containing the four packets of ingredients for the purification ritual, along with a mallet and enough salt to set up several safe zones.

"If you get trapped in one spot and it's not safe to move, don't try to get out. Call and wait for me to come get you."

"I know, Dad."

"Stay away from windows, lamps, anything with a cord that could be used for strangling."

"Seriously, Dad, I know. Let's go get this thing already."

Dad smiled. "That's my boy."

They split up, Dean moving up the stairs while Dad headed into the living room. For a while, the only sound was the shaking of the salt containers as they set up safe zones at each of the four corners of their respective floors. The very stillness of the house suggested the ghost's awareness of their activity—even normal nighttime sounds of furniture settling were absent—but all remained quiet until Dad struck the first hammer blow.

Dean immediately began attacking the drywall in the master bedroom with practiced speed and precision. A crash from below indicated that the ghost was targeting Dad first, which was the goal; now Dean just had to focus on getting the job done without thinking about what was going on down there. Dad knew how to handle himself.

He placed the first packet and sprinted to the kids' bedroom opposite. A cavalcade of toy cars rolled out from under the bunk bed as he passed it, tripping him up and sending him sprawling headfirst through his carefully constructed salt line. The ghost had found him. With a grunt, he picked himself up and frantically tried to reform the line as the contents of a child-size tool set began hurling themselves at his face. He listened for the sound of Dad's mallet below, but he was too distracted by the commotion and the wrench he'd just taken to the forehead. Too small for another concussion, hopefully.

The salt line remade, he turned to the wall to see that the flying tools had already caused some damage. With an ironic grin, he swung the mallet at the biggest dent and busted the wall wide open with a few blows. With a quick motion, he placed the second packet. _Halfway there._

By now the bedroom looked like a war zone, projectiles flying and the huge bunk bed cutting a groove in the floor as it slid back and forth to block his way. Dean was pretty sure this fit the definition of "trapped," but he didn't want to call Dad just yet; maybe if the poltergeist was expending enough energy throwing toy projectiles at him, it wouldn't be able to focus on hitting Dad with the really dangerous stuff in the kitchen.

Just as that thought crossed his mind, though, a horrible yell rang out from below. For a moment Dean stood frozen, heart hammering in his chest, wrestling with the choice between following Dad's orders and possibly saving his life. Then, abandoning mallet and duffel, he launched himself forward through the gap between the upper and lower bunks. He ducked and rolled out into the hallway and stopped at the railing along the top of the stairwell. He sprang to his feet.

There was no time to react between the moment when he saw the taut lamp cord flying at him and the moment when it clotheslined him, sending him over the railing and down to the landing below.

A sickening crunch in his right leg left no room for doubt even before the pain caught up with him, and he screamed out a curse. He was unable to take stock of the damage, though, as toys from the bedroom above began raining down on his head, the poltergeist continuing its temper tantrum even though he was down for the count. Spurred by the mental image of the bunk bed following them out to crash down on top of him, Dean dragged himself painfully away from the stairwell.

Dad burst out of the kitchen into the hall. His left forearm was bleeding badly, but he seemed otherwise okay. Dean mentally cursed himself for overreacting; of course he should have known that Dad could handle it.

"Dean!" Dad dropped to his knees beside him. "What happened?"

"Fell… down the stairs…" Dean grunted between his teeth.

"Which corners are left?"

"North… and east…"

"Where's the duffel?"

"Kids' room."

With that, Dad charged up the stairs, dodging the toy projectiles. The huge bunk bed came through the railing just as he reached the top, but he managed to avoid it, and it thundered to the bottom with a crash. Dean winced, glad he wasn't underneath it.

The crashing and banging followed Dad through the upper floor of the house, but it barely slowed him down. Within ten minutes, the noise subsided as Dad placed the final piece of the ritual.

A moment later, Dad reappeared at his side and, wounded arm notwithstanding, picked him up and carried him out of the house.

* * *

Sam very nearly hadn't taken the call. He'd been winning—he was good at gaming for someone who almost never got to play—and when he'd felt his phone going off, he'd been ready to dismiss it as just another warning about the salt lines or some other dumb crap. But then guilt had gotten the better of him, and he'd picked up. It was a good thing he did.

He was in the car now with Dustin's older brother Steve, heading up to the hospital as fast as the speed limit would allow. Steve had tried a couple times to get him to talk, but even if Sam could have told him anything beyond, "My brother broke his leg," he wouldn't have been able to say much. A guilty pit had opened up in his stomach, and all he could think was, _This wouldn't have happened if I was there._ Dad hadn't said it on the phone, but Sam had heard it in his tone: Dad blamed him. Why shouldn't he? Dad had said they were going to need his help, but he hadn't listened. All he'd cared about was that stupid party, and now Dean was hurt, just like Dad had predicted.

Dad met him in the lobby. "Hi, Sammy," he said coldly.

"Hey, Dad" Sam answered, relieved Dad wasn't launching into a tirade yet; he wanted to see his brother first. "Where's Dean?"

"This way."

Dad led him to an elevator and then down a long hallway. Sam didn't pay much attention to his surroundings; he'd been inside enough hospitals not to find them interesting anymore. The silence as they walked was full of tension.

The instant the door opened, Sam rushed to Dean's bedside. "Dean!"

"Hey, Sammy."

Sam took stock of the damage. The cast went all the way up Dean's thigh; he remembered Dad saying something on the phone about multiple breaks. "Are you in too much pain?" he asked anxiously.

"Right now?" his brother said with a wide grin. "Right now I'm high as a kite on painkillers; I can't feel a thing."

"How long before you can walk again?"

Dean's smile slipped momentarily. "How about we save unpleasant stuff like that till later, kiddo?"

With growing dread, Sam looked back at Dad, knowing he would tell him the truth.

"Three to six months," Dad answered.

 _Three to six months?_ The pit in his stomach widened. Three to six months of Dean in pain, lying around going stir crazy, unable to drive or hunt or do any of the stuff he liked to do. That was what Sam's one night of normal had cost.

"So how was the party, Sammy?" Dad asked, the ice in his tone biting. "Was it worth it?"

"Dad, we talked about this," Dean cut in before Sam could reply. "You are not gonna put this on him."

"Why not?" Dad demanded. "If he'd been with us, this never would have happened."

"Dad, I was being stupid. I thought you were in trouble, so I disobeyed a direct order, and I paid for it. It would have happened just the same if Sam had been there."

"No, it wouldn't. Because if Sam had been in that house you would never have left him alone to come after me."

Dean opened his mouth again, but the protest died on his lips. Dad was right, and they all knew it.

After a long, uncomfortable silence, Dad said, "I'm gonna go grab a cup of caffeine." He left the room.

As soon as he was gone, Sam dissolved into tears. "Dean, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I wasn't there."

Dean reached a hand out to him, and he climbed up next to him in the hospital bed and buried his head in his brother's chest. "It's okay, Sammy. Whatever Dad says, it isn't your fault."

"Yes, it is! Dad's right, you're more careful when I'm around…"

"Oh, so now it's your job to hang around and keep me from being stupid?" Sam gave a choking laugh. Dean ruffled his hair affectionately. "You know, I really don't get it, dude, but it you've gotta have your normal time, then you have your normal time. Don't let your dumb, reckless big brother stop you."

Sam pulled away, shaking his head. "No. Normal is not worth this."

The left side of Dean's mouth pulled up in a cockeyed grin. "That's what I'm always trying to tell you. Freak."

"Weirdo," Sam shot back with a half-smile, climbing down from the bed.

"Where're you going?"

"I gotta go find Dad."

"Why?"

"I want to apologize for everything I said to him. I don't want to fight with him anymore."

Dean smiled wistfully. "Yeah, sure, Sammy. You'll apologize, and then within five minutes you guys will be at each other's throats."

"No, I mean it," Sam protested earnestly. "I'm not ever leaving you alone again."

* * *

Dean had known it was an empty promise when Sammy made it. Sam and Dad would never stop fighting; they were at once too different and too alike. And Sam would leave him again, Dean had known that, too. He hadn't imagined it being for so long, or so completely, but he'd known Sam would try to run away from the hunting lifestyle again. Just as he'd known he'd eventually come back.

Sam leaves Matt Pike with his father and walks down the driveway, coming to lean against the side of the car next to Dean. "I want to find Dad," he says, his face full of longing as he looks back at them.

"Yeah, me too."

"Yeah, but I just…" Sam trails off, searching for the words. "I want to apologize to him."

Dean looks over at his brother. "For what?"

"All the things I said to him," Sam answers, shaking his head. "He was just doing the best he could."

Dean nods slowly, seeing for a moment the shaggy-haired twelve-year-old with the tear-stained face from ten years ago, instead of his gangly grown-up brother. "Well, don't worry, we'll find him. And you'll apologize. And then within five minutes you guys will be at each other's throats."

Sam chuckles and ducks his head in embarrassed acknowledgment, and Dean knows he's remembering the same scene. "Yeah, probably," he admits this time. After a moment, he adds, "Let's hit the road."

"Let's," Dean agrees.


	9. Lean On Me

**Disclaimer: I do not own** ** _Supernatural_** **. No copyright infringement is intended. The chapter title is taken from the song of the same name by Bill Withers. Dialogue is reproduced from the episode.**

* * *

 **MC4A Challenges (Retroactive):** FPC; BAON; ToS; NC; PP; SoC; SHoE; FF; NCR **  
Representations:** Dean Winchester; Sam Winchester; Mary Winchester; Winchester Family; Missouri Mosely; Saving People, Hunting Things; Poltergeist; Ghost; Role Model; Cracked Facade; Stubbornness & Pride **  
Word Count:** 1812

* * *

 **Tag to Ep. 1x9: "Home"**

* * *

Lean On Me

" _You gonna be all right, man?"_

" _Let me get back to you on that."_

Yes. The correct answer was "yes." Even if the very sight of that house makes him want to turn the car around and drive as far and as fast as he can in the other direction, he should have told Sammy he was fine. What's wrong with him today? That one word, "home"—is that really all it takes to send him into a tailspin? Ever since this morning, ever since Sam made his case that they have to come back here, it's like he has no control over his emotions; whatever he feels is plastered all over his face for anyone to see.

This isn't how the older brother is supposed to act, he reminds himself. Sam is the one whose weirdo visions about people getting hurt are suddenly coming true; the last thing his brother needs to is to be worried about him on top of that. He's got to pull himself together, got to start doing his job again. He knows he's been getting lax—spilling his guts about the night Mom died, the total breakdown over the airplane incident, and now going to pieces over this… It's just that, with Dad gone AWOL and not even bothering to pick up the phone, Dean kind of feels like the rug has been pulled out from under him, and he's fighting madly to stay on his feet. Sometimes he just can't resist reaching out to grab onto his little brother for support.

But he knows that's got to stop. Sammy counts on him to be strong, and he's shown way too much weakness already. If he can't hold it together, he'll lose the trust Sam's always had in him. And with everything else he's lost, he can't afford to lose that, too.

* * *

The little girl's story about the fiery figure in her closet scares him like anything. He knows what it sounds like; Sam doesn't have to scream it in his face. After all these years… could it really be that simple? Could the thing that killed Mom have been lurking in that house all this time? He can't make his mind process it. His entire childhood has been spent preparing to kill this thing—studying, training, molding himself into the perfect soldier Dad wanted him to be—and now that the moment has come, if that's truly what this is, he isn't ready.

"I'll be right back," he mumbles to Sam. "Gotta go to the bathroom." He heads for the side of the gas station, fingers fumbling in his pocket to find his phone, to dial the familiar numbers.

" _This is John Winchester. If this is an emergency, call my son Dean."_

His heart sinks, though it was too much to hope that Dad would pick up. _What if I have an emergency, Dad?_ he thinks in frustration. _Who am_ I _supposed to call?_

"Dad? I know I've left you messages before. I don't even know if you get them." He works to swallow the lump in his throat. It's bad enough to break down in front of Sammy; it would be even worse to show his weakness to Dad.

"But I'm with Sam, and we're in Lawrence… and there's something in our old house." He pauses again, trying to collect himself. "I don't know if it's the thing that killed Mom or not, but… I don't know what to do." He cringes, hearing the tears that have crept into his voice, unable to take them back. It's no use. He just _needs_ him right now, so bad. "So, whatever you're doing, if you could get here… Please. I need your help, Dad."

He flips the phone closed, fighting despair.

* * *

"If there's a dark energy around here, this room should be the center of it," says Missouri Mosely.

"Why?" Sam asks.

Dean knows why. He doesn't need a crazy old medium to tell him what happened here; he can see the fire, can feel the heat, can hear Dad's voice yelling in his head: _"Take your brother outside as fast as you can! Now, Dean, go!"_ This is the room, the last place his Mom was seen alive. The last place her killer is known to have been.

Missouri moves slowly around the room, "sensing the energies" or whatever mumbo jumbo she supposedly does. Psychic or no psychic, he'll take the hard science of an EMF reader any day.

Still, his spirits lift a little when she says, "I don't know if you boys should be disappointed or relieved, but this ain't the thing that took your Mom."

"Are you sure?" Sam demands. "How do you know?"

"It isn't the same energy I felt the last time I was here. It's something different."

"What is it?" Dean asks. He can feel the disappointment radiating off Sam—his brother is still overcome by the desire to destroy whatever killed his girlfriend—but for the most part, Dean is relieved. They won't have to face that thing on their own.

"Not it. _Them_ ," Missouri announces, wandering into the closet. "There's more than one spirit in this place."

Dean frowns as she goes off on some spiel about real evil leaving wounds that get infected—more spiritualist nonsense—but one thing she says makes sense to him: "It's attracted a poltergeist. A nasty one. And it won't rest until Jenny and her babies are dead."

Poltergeists, he can deal with. "Well, one thing's for sure," he says with determination. "Nobody's dying in this house ever again."

* * *

Gun in one hand and ax in the other, Dean sprints to the front door of the house. When a couple of kicks fail to dislodge the door, he lays into it with the ax, the wood splintering too slowly under his blows. Twice now he's almost lost Sam in this house—once when that fiend came after him as a baby, and again earlier tonight when the poltergeist nearly choked him to death with a lamp cord. Both times it's been Dean who saved him, and there's no way on this earth he's letting anything happen to his brother now.

"Sam!" he shouts as he finally busts out one of the panels. He can't see him. Two more blows knock out the lower panels of the door, and he crawls through and begins to search the house, calling out his brother's name.

He hears the crackle of flames as he strides through the hallway and finally catches sight of his brother, pinned to the wall by an invisible force. In front of him is a tower of fire, a human figure faintly visible at its center. Dean places himself between Sam and the ghost and levels his gun at it, ready to pump it full of rock salt.

"No, don't! Don't!" Sam cries.

"What? Why?"

"Because I know who it is," Sam answers, his voice growing soft. "I can see her now."

Dean stares at the spirit in confusion. As he watches, the flickering flames around its head resolve themselves into locks of hair, and a face appears, gentle and serene in the midst of the fire. A face Dean knows.

Then the flames die out, and she's there, standing in front of him, exactly as he remembers her. Dean's hand begins to shake, and he lowers the gun. Her blonde hair falls gently over her shoulders, resting against the lace of her white nightgown, and her eyes stare at him with the tender love he's missed so much.

"Mom?" he whispers.

"Dean." She steps toward him, and he yearns to reach out and touch her, to run into her arms and bury his head in her chest as though he were a little boy again. But she isn't real. His mind knows that even as his heart wishes it could be true, that she were back, that his family could be whole again. She's only a spirit.

She moves around him and approaches Sam, still pinned to the wall. Tears start from Sammy's eyes when she says his name, and Dean realizes that this will be the only memory of Mom his brother will ever have to hold onto. "I'm sorry," she whispers.

"For what?" Sam asks her.

She only looks at him, a world of grief in her eyes. _For leaving you alone,_ Dean can almost hear her saying. _For the fact that you never got to know the comfort of my hugs, the warmth of my kisses, the depth of my love. For our broken family, for your Dad's pain, for all the hardships you suffered growing up. For you not getting to have a mother._

But then she turns away, staring up at the thing holding Sam prisoner. "You," she says, her voice ringing with authority, "get out of my house. And let go of my son." The flames leap up again, beginning at her feet and rising to envelope her whole body. The blaze grows brighter and brighter, stretching upwards to the ceiling and outwards to fill the room until, with a final roar, it vanishes into thin air.

The pressure holding Sam to the wall releases, and he slumps forward. Besides the brothers' heavy breathing, there isn't a sound to be heard in the house.

"Now it's over," Sam says at last, and Dean sees another tear slip from his eye.

* * *

Even as he flips through the old photographs Jenny's given him, Dean keeps an eye on Sam, sitting with Missouri on the front porch. He hopes that whatever the crazy old psychic is saying to him over there, it'll help. He doesn't understand what's going on with Sam, why his little brother is suddenly having these prophetic dreams or how he knew there were still spirits in that house even after they were supposed to be gone. Dean didn't used to believe in this kind of thing. And now that he can't deny its existence anymore, he doesn't know what to do with the knowledge.

Whatever happens, though, he knows he'll be there for Sammy. He'll help him deal with the nightmares and listen to him talk through them, and when they tell him something bad is going to happen, then he and Sam will work together to stop it. And eventually, they'll figure this thing out. Together.

But in order to do that, he's got to be strong. No more breakdowns, no more "chick flick moments." If he's going to help Sam, he's got to be on his game, and that means not letting Sam see when he's weak. He still hasn't regained his balance, still feels unsteady, but Sammy doesn't need to know that. It's time to go back to letting Sam lean on him instead of the other way around.

So the next time his brother asks, "Are you okay, man?" he'll have his answer ready: "Yeah, Sammy. I'm fine."


	10. Distance

**Disclaimer: I do not own** ** _Supernatural_** **. No copyright infringement is intended. The dialogue in the opening scene is reproduced from the episode.**

* * *

 **MC4A Challenges (Retroactive):** BAON; ToS; NC; PP; SoC; SHoE; FF; NCR **  
Representations:** Dean Winchester; Sam Winchester; Winchester Family; Saving People, Hunting Things; Stubbornness & Pride; Psychiatrist; Confessions; Surrogate Parent; Independence; **  
Word Count:** 1821

* * *

 **Tag to Ep. 1x10: "Asylum"**

* * *

Distance

" _Do we need to talk about this?"_

" _No, no. I'm not really in the 'sharing and caring' kind of mood. Just want to get some sleep."_

Sam opens the passenger door and climbs in, a sick feeling settling in the pit of his stomach. He'd been hoping—idiotically—that an apology would be enough to gloss over all the awful things he said back there under the influence of Dr. Sanford Ellicott's little rage fest. He should have known it wouldn't be that simple. Dean seemed surprised he was even able to remember the incident, but that isn't the problem; the problem is whether he'll ever be able to forget those hateful words still drilling through his brain:

" _Why are we even here? 'Cause you're following Dad's orders like a good little soldier? 'Cause you always do what he says without question? Are you that desperate for his approval? That's the difference between you and me. I have a mind of my own. I'm not pathetic, like you."_

Those words have cut deep. He knows that. And in usual Dean fashion, his brother is going to just slap on a bandage and leave the wounds alone to fester.

" _I didn't mean it. Any of it,"_ he'd said to Dean. But he knows his brother doesn't believe him, and, truth be told, he isn't quite sure he believes it, either. Because every time he tries to convince himself it's true, his mind goes back to that visit to the psychiatrist's office a few hours before…

* * *

Dr. Ellicott—the currently living, non-criminally insane Dr. James Ellicott—leans back in his chair and fixes Sam with a look of patient attentiveness. "This brother you're road-tripping with… how do you feel about him?"

Sam stares back at him for a moment, floundering. He didn't plan for this. True, he did set up an appointment with a psychiatrist, but he had intended to be the one asking the questions. He'd had a vague idea of talking about Jess a little if Dr. Ellicott really insisted on getting personal, but he'd meant to be in and out before it got that far. But the doctor is refusing to tell him any more about Roosevelt Asylum until he tells something honest about himself, and of all things, he's hit upon his brother as the topic for discussion.

 _What can it hurt?_ Sam thinks. There's certainly enough dysfunction going on between him and Dean right now to provide plenty of fodder to satisfy a psychiatrist. It won't take much to convince the doctor that he's pretty messed up, and then he can get the story and get out of here.

"Um, yeah, my brother," he stammers, unsure where to start. "He's um, well, you know…"

Dr. Ellicott puts up a hand to interrupt him. "Just to let you know, Sam, anything you tell me here is purely confidential. Whatever you say, your brother will never know about it unless you want him to."

"Uh, thanks, Doc," says Sam uncomfortably. "It's not really like that, though. It's just… well, you know how older brothers are. He's kinda overbearing, you know?"

Dr. Ellicott nods encouragingly. "Overbearing? In what way?"

"Well, it's just that it's always his way or the highway. Like this road trip, for example—if Dean gets it in his head that we're gonna go someplace, then we're going there, no matter what I have to say about it."

"I see. So, for example, did you want to come here to Rockford?"

"No, I really didn't. But our Dad said we should come here, and Dean always does exactly what Dad says."

"Is your Dad traveling with you?"

"No, he's off on a business trip of his own at the moment."

"I see," the doctor says again. "And what's your relationship with your Dad like?"

Sam cringes. He was hoping not to end up here; brother issues are tame enough, but a psychiatrist could have a heyday with his daddy issues. "Dad and I are fine," he answers unconvincingly.

Dr. Ellicott gives him a patronizing smile. "Sam, the deal was that you had to be honest with me. What's going on between you and your Dad?"

"Nothing! At least, nothing new," Sam replies. "We just don't see eye-to-eye is all."

"But he and Dean do?"

"I don't know, it's more like Dean just does whatever Dad says whether he likes it or not. He never questions him, never disobeys an order. The perfect son, you know?"

The doctor nods. "And how does that affect your relationship with your brother?"

Sam pauses, thinking over how to answer. He's given Dr. Ellicott enough, been far more honest than he intended to be. He doesn't owe the man the story of his life; in fact, he probably owes it to Dean to shut his big mouth. Or does he? After all, Dean is acting like a serious jerk. Surely Sam's well within his rights to let off a little steam, especially to a psychiatrist of all people. Who knows, maybe it'll even help.

"You know, it's funny," he says finally, "usually Dean and I are great. But lately, it seems like all he does is order me around, and I'm sick of doing everything he tells me to do. Especially when it's actually just what Dad tells him. I mean, that stuff was fine when we were in grade school, but a 27-year-old man still kowtowing to his old man's every whim? Come on, Doc, there's got to be something screwed up about that."

Dr. Ellicott frowns thoughtfully. Then his next question hits Sam out of left field: "Sam, do you have a mother?"

"She passed away when I was a baby," Sam replies, looking away.

"I'm so sorry to hear that. How did your father deal with her passing?"

Sam scoffs. "He didn't. He's still not dealing with it to this day."

"And Dean?"

"I know it was hard for him. He was four, so he can still remember her a little. But somebody had to pull it together after Mom died, and it sure wasn't going to be Dad, so Dean ended up becoming the responsible one."

The doctor nods as if Sam has just handed him the final piece of a puzzle he's been trying to assemble. "Sam, tell me," he asks, "who would you say primarily raised you, your father or your brother?"

Sam looks at him in surprise. His first impulse is to say that his father raised him, of course, and a jacked-up upbringing it was, too. But then he stops. Images begin to flow through his mind, one after another. Dean reading him bedtime stories and rubbing his back until he fell asleep. Dean standing over the stove stirring a pot of SpagettiOs that for a long time was the only meal he knew how to fix but was better than going without because Dad was too busy or too drunk to go to the grocery store. Dean taking the training wheels off Sam's bike and then holding onto the seat until he got steady enough to take off. Dean packing his school lunch and checking his homework and forging Dad's signature on his school agenda to prove that at least somebody was keeping up with his academics. All the normal things that parents are supposed to do, the one who did them for him was…

"Dean. It was Dean."

Dr. Ellicott nods again. "I thought that might be the case. You know, Sam, it's completely normal for a young man your age to chafe against parental authority, to want to establish some independence. The difference for you is that in order to do that, you're feeling the need to break away not just from your father's authority, but from your brother's—your second father's, if you will. That's bound to cause the kind of tension you've been describing to me."

Sam frowns. What the doctor's saying… it does sound like him. Only it's him from four years ago, before Stanford, when he was so desperate to get away from Dad's all-encompassing control over his life that he would have taken any way out he could find. He tries to recall what he felt toward Dean at the time. He remembers being reluctant to leave his brother, but it was more from concern that Dean wouldn't take care of himself without his little brother there being a pain in his rear, than from worry that he himself wouldn't be able to function without Dean. And even that had become subordinate to his frustration when Dean had taken Dad's side about him leaving. At that point, he truly had been ready just to get away from them both.

But that was then. He _had_ gotten away from his Dad and his brother, and it had worked for a while, though sometimes the growing pains had been almost too much to bear. Then Dean had crash landed back into his life at what turned out to be exactly the right time, as the new life he'd built for himself literally went up in flames around him. Dean was there when Sam needed him most, and whatever other issues they have going on, he still is. It's too soon to think about leaving again. Isn't it?

"Sam?" Dr. Ellicott tries to reclaim his attention.

"Yeah, sorry, Doc. I was just… thinking."

"That's quite all right. I was just going to ask, how much longer are you planning to be on this road trip?"

"Uh, we hadn't really set a limit on it."

"Well, Sam, my recommendation would be to try to find an amicable way to wrap it up here soon. Then, why don't you see about setting out on your own for a change? Go to school, get a job, something that'll allow you to create some space for yourself. You know, however much we love our families, sometimes a little distance isn't such a bad thing."

Sam hides a wry smile. Right. Just press the reset button. Go back and do the whole thing over again and hope for a less tragic result this time.

Aloud, he says, "Thanks, Doc. I'll try and take your advice. Would you mind telling me about the asylum now?"

* * *

Sam glances at Dean's profile in the driver's seat next to him. There's a hard set to his brother's jaw, and he can tell by the detached look in his eye that Dean isn't actually listening to the Van Halen song blaring out of the speakers. Sam wonders if he's mentally replaying their conversation.

 _I didn't mean it,_ he wants so desperately to say again. _Not a single word of it._ But Dean has made it clear that the subject is closed, and attempting to bring it up again probably won't get any response beyond the usual "No chick flick moments."

Anyway, Sam has already told that lie once. He isn't sure he can tell it again.


	11. Hard to Say I'm Sorry

**Disclaimer: I do not own** ** _Supernatural_** **. No copyright infringement is intended. The title of this chapter is taken from the song of the same name by Chicago. Dialogue is reproduced from the episode. Minor edits have been made to remove profanity and for flow.**

* * *

 **MC4A Challenges (Retroactive):** BAON; ToS; NC; LL; PP; SoC; FF; NCR **  
Representations:** Dean Winchester; Sam Winchester; Winchester Family; Saving People, Hunting Things; Stubbornness & Pride; College; Research; Regrets; Loneliness; Independence; Letting Go **  
Word Count:** 2533

* * *

 **Tag to Ep. 1x11: "Scarecrow"**

* * *

Hard to Say I'm Sorry

It doesn't hit him until he's back in the car, with the silence closing in oppressively around him. Dean realizes that he's waiting for something, waiting to hear the slam of the passenger side door before he turns on the engine. Even though he's literally just left Sam standing in the middle of the road with nothing but a backpack and the laptop case because apparently that's what Sam wants him to do.

Cursing himself for the fool he is, he turns the keys in the ignition. The taillights cast a weird reddish glare on his brother's retreating back as Dean watches him in the rearview. He shifts gears and edges out onto the highway, his eyes still glued to the mirror. Sam doesn't look back. Dean glares at the back of his stupid shaggy head, willing his little brother to turn around, to give some sign that he regrets leaving him again, but there's nothing. The Impala cruises around a bend in the road, and just like that, Sam disappears, walking out of his life for the second time with apparently as little concern as the first for the damage he's leaving behind him.

It was so good for a while there. Just him and Sam on the road again, saving people, hunting things, together. It had been a struggle at first, finding the old rhythms, treading gingerly around the sore spots, filling each other in on the parts of the last four years that needed to be told and concealing the parts that were best forgotten. But they'd been doing pretty well for the most part, and Dean had thought…

What had he thought? That Sam had actually let himself get drawn back into this business because he'd missed his big brother? That being on the road with him again might truly be what Sam wanted this time? What is he, delusional? Of course it's about revenge, about finding the thing that killed his brother's girlfriend. He's known from the start that the only reason Sam's with him at all is because of the fire. If it weren't for that, Sam would still be living happily at Stanford with his textbooks and his straight _A_ s and his gorgeous little girlfriend, and Dean would still be on the road alone. For Sam, Dean is second choice. And he's a fool to have let himself forget it.

Angrily, he rummages around in the cassette box, pulls out the _Chicago 16_ tape, and shoves it into the player. He cranks up the volume as the comfortable beat of "Chains" starts blasting from the speakers. He can deal with this. He's got four years of experience drowning out the silence; the lonely thoughts'll quiet down for a while if he can get the music loud enough, especially if he sings along. Nobody in the passenger seat means nobody to tell him to shut up before he wakes the dead.

The last chorus of "Chains" dies away, and he launches into a heartfelt rendition of "Hard to Say I'm Sorry." He doesn't get far, though, before the line _"I just want you to stay"_ punches him right in the gut, and he glances over at the empty passenger seat, struggling to contain the wave of loneliness washing over him.

No. If Sammy is so determined to be rid of him, then fine, he can leave. Dean wants his brother with him, but more than that, he wants him to want to be with him. And if that's not a priority for Sam, then it's better to let him go right now; the longer it gets dragged out, the more pain it'll cause for both of them.

" _And after all that's been said and done, you're just a part of me I can't let go…"_

Dean reaches out and switches off the music, furious with himself. What's he thinking? It's just a stupid little ballad about lovers, not pain-in-the-rear little brothers who were never going to stick around in the first place. It shouldn't be tearing him up like this.

But as the too familiar silence fills the car again, he can't stop the thoughts from coming. _Why did I just drive away and leave him? At least the last time he left I dropped him off at the airport, not on a highway in the middle of nowhere at 4:30 in the morning. I couldn't have stopped him, but I could have at least insisted on taking him to where he could catch a bus._ He imagines what Dad would say if he knew. Irresponsible. Careless. Stupid. He should know better than this, should have taken better care of Sammy even if Sammy didn't want to be taken care of. It's still his job, after all. The past four years may have changed the way he did it, but they never stopped him looking after his brother, even if it was in secret. And now he just leaves him? Just like that? What kind of brother is he?

He know why. He was angry, angry enough not to be thinking straight. The problem with brothers is that they know how to hit you where it hurts the most, and he's still reeling from the blow Sam dealt him.

" _How old were you when Mom died? Four? Jess died six months ago. How could you possibly know how I feel?"_

Dean had just stared at him, unable to respond. So that's what Sam thinks? That he has some sort of special claim on this hunt because his grief is more recent? Dean's entire _life_ was screwed up by Mom's death. Killing this thing—it's not just about avenging Mom, it's about avenging everything else it took away from him. It's about the laughing, joking version of Dad that he barely remembers, the one that died at the same time Mom did and left behind an empty shell trying to fill himself up with booze. It's about the fact that Dean never got to be a kid, about the way he spent all his free time learning to fight when the other boys his age were playing sports. It's about moving every few weeks or months, about never having a real home beyond the Impala, about learning not to bother making friends at a new school because soon he'd leave them behind and never see them again. It's about having to be both father and mother to Sammy when he really still needed parenting himself, and just hoping the kid turned out okay because he sure had no idea what he was doing. Dean knows Sam's still raw from the pain of Jessica's death, but the fact is that Dean has at least as much to avenge as his brother, if not more.

But Dad said no. And no matter how unfair, or confusing, or unreasonable that might seem, if Dad wants them to stay out of this fight, then that's what Dean's going to do. There's always a reason for everything Dad does, even if he's not willing to explain it at the time. You do what he says, things tend to turn out okay; you disobey him, even if you think you're helping, and things fall apart real fast. It's happened enough times that Dean has learned to accept it. Sam calls it blind faith, but it's not; it's years and years of experience. Somehow, Sam's just been bullheaded enough to miss the pattern. And Dean can only hope nothing bad will happen to him this time because of it.

He pulls into Burkitsville just as the sun appears above the horizon. It's a peaceful-looking place, way out in the boonies, the kind of town that only has one stoplight. He turns to make a crack about Dad sending them to Mayberry, but the passenger seat is still desolately empty. This shouldn't be so hard to get used to. He got through four years of this, and it's only taken a few months to set him back to square one. He knows from experience he'll have to put a lot of lonely miles on the Impala before he quits talking to the empty air.

Without really thinking about it, he pulls out his phone. He scrolls down his contact list to find Sam's name and hesitates with his thumb over the "call" button. Just to let Sam know he got here. Just to find out if he made it back to civilization and whether he found a bus to Sacramento. Dean checks the clock on the dash: 7:36 AM. It's been about three hours. He imagines Sam's response: _"I'm fine, Dean. Seriously, you can't leave me alone for more than a few hours? I'm not a baby anymore. I did just fine without you at Stanford; I don't need you checking up on me all the time."_

He shuts off the car and gets out. He'll wait to call Sam until he actually has something to tell him. His brother's fine. He has to be.

* * *

Dean checks into a hotel the next town over to wait for nightfall. The police escort out of town was inconvenient to say the least; it's going to make it harder for him to save that couple. He'll have to drive back to the orchard around dusk and wait for them to show up. If he had anyone to bet with, he'd lay down good money that the couple's newly "fixed" vehicle will last exactly long enough to get them to the freaky scarecrow's hunting ground before it conks out. He means to be there when it happens.

In the meantime, though, all he can do is wait. He flips on the TV, but as usual, there's nothing on daytime television worth watching. For the twentieth time today, he thinks about calling Sammy. Assuming Sam was able to catch a bus, he's probably well on his way to California by now. Dean wonders if he'll stop at a hotel or if his brother's bullheadedness is going to carry him straight through to Sacramento. Sleeping on a bus has got to be way worse than sleeping in the Impala, but he wouldn't put it past Sam to try it.

Suddenly, a thought pops into his head. What about Sammy's nightmares? They've been a little better since he got the whole "prophetic dreams" thing off his chest, but Sam's on the trail of the thing that killed Jessica now, or at least, he's on Dad's trail, and Dad's on the demon's trail. If that's not enough to start the dreams back up, Dean doesn't know what would be. And he won't be there now to reach over and shake his brother's shoulder or casually knock something over so the crash will wake him up. Sam is going to have to suffer through the nightmares alone.

Then something worse occurs to him. What if his brother has another one of those weirdo visions? Dean promised himself he'd be there to help Sam deal with them, to help figure out what's going on, but he can't do that if he's halfway across the country.

Dean grabs his phone and quickly scrolls through the contacts. Once again, though, his thumb pauses over "call." What's he going to say? _"Hey, Sammy, make sure you don't have any nightmares while I'm not there"_? There's nothing he can do from here, not even any advice he knows to give.

He shuts the phone off. No. There's no point in calling. Whatever dreams Sam might have tonight, he's going to have to deal with them on his own.

* * *

As he climbs into the car the next morning, all Dean can think is that he finally has something worth calling Sam about. Last night in the orchard was more than enough proof that whatever's going on here, the scarecrow is at the center of it; he's got a solid working theory and an appointment with a college professor to follow up on a lead. More than enough to let him call Sam without seeming like the lonely, worried, overprotective big brother he really is.

"The scarecrow _climbed off its cross_?" Sam asks in disbelief when he's explained the situation.

"Yeah, I'm telling you, Burkitsville, Indiana. Fun town."

"It didn't kill the couple, did it?"

Dean rolls his eyes at Sam's concern. "No. No, I can cope without you, you know." _Did it for four whole years, if you remember._

"So something must be animating it," Sam says. "A spirit."

"No, it's more than a spirit. It's a god. A pagan god, anyway." Dean explains his reasoning while Sam listens thoughtfully. As always, his brother is quick to catch on; he wishes Sam had been here yesterday so he could have bounced these ideas off of him before. His genius brother would have made the connection long before he did. For that matter, he wishes Sam was here now so he could have him do the research instead of making the hike out to a community college to get the info himself.

He tells Sam about his appointment, adding, "since I don't have my trusty sidekick geek boy to do all the research."

Sam chuckles. "You know, if you're hinting you need my help, just ask."

 _Yeah, of course I need your help, dummy. I've always needed your help._ "I'm not hinting anything." He thinks about hanging up before Sam starts getting all sentimental, but something stops him. "Actually, uh…" He clears his throat. "I want you to know… I mean, don't think…"

Sam cuts him off. "Yeah. I'm sorry, too."

Dean shifts uncomfortably at hearing the words out loud, though he's glad his brother gets what he was trying to say. Again he thinks about hanging up, leaving it at that, but again, he stops. If he and Sam are really parting ways, then this time there are some things he doesn't want to leave unsaid. "Sam, you were right. You gotta do your own thing. You gotta live your own life."

"You serious?" asks Sam incredulously.

"You've always known what you want, and you go after it. You stand up to Dad; you always have. I wish I—" Dean stops himself, not willing to go there. Those are thoughts he hasn't even admitted to himself, and this isn't the time for them. "Anyway… I admire that about you. I'm proud of you, Sammy."

There's a long pause on the other end of the line. "I don't even know what to say."

"Say you'll take care of yourself," Dean tells him, ignoring the stabbing pang of loss in his chest.

"I will."

"Call me when you find Dad."

"Okay. Bye, Dean."

Dean snaps the phone shut, blinking against the tears threatening to form in his eyes. He's being girly enough without the waterworks starting. But he doesn't regret the things he told Sam. It's what he should have said the first time Sam left; maybe if he'd said it then, Sam wouldn't have taken so much pain and bitterness with him, or left so much behind. He can't change what happened the first time around, but he's been given a second chance, and he just hopes, this time, he didn't blow it.

* * *

 **A/N: A couple minor details in this chapter reference events in Fanpire101's** ** _In His Glow_** **, specifically Dean dropping off Sam at the airport and Dean coming to Stanford regularly to check up on Sam in secret. These elements are used with permission. If you haven't already checked out Fanpire101's work, I highly recommend it!**


	12. Undeserving

**Disclaimer: I do not own** ** _Supernatural_** **. No copyright infringement is intended. Dialogue is reproduced from the episode. Minor edits have been made for flow and to remove profanity.**

* * *

 **MC4A Challenges (Retroactive):** FPC; BAON; ToS; NC; LL; PP; SoC; FF; NCR **  
Representations:** Dean Winchester; Sam Winchester; Winchester Family; Layla Rourke; Saving People, Hunting Things; Stubbornness & Pride; Death & Acceptance; Faith; Courage **  
Word Count:** 3515

* * *

 **A/N: After finally writing up to this point, I realized, with some help from ZadArchie and chrissie0707, that my original tag for "Faith" didn't quite fit with the rest of the fic and wasn't really the best portrayal of the brothers, either. I decided to replace it with an exploration of Dean's feelings of guilt and unworthiness that really come through in this episode, culminating in his decision not to run away from the reaper when it comes after him. The episode doesn't explain it, but I think that, after several rewatchings, maybe I understand why.**

 **If, for whatever reason, you should want to look at my original tag for this episode, it can be found in** ** _What I'm Trying to Say (Outtakes)_** **. I'm not terribly proud of it anymore, but as it was the piece that first got me writing for** ** _Supernatural_** **, I didn't want to remove it entirely.**

* * *

 **Tag to Ep. 1x12: "Faith"**

* * *

Undeserving

"Can I ask you one last question?" Dean asks the reverend.

The blind man smiles at him. "'Course you can."

Dean runs his tongue over his lips, hesitating. He should just go. He's learned as much as Le Grange seems willing to tell him, and it's enough to go on, for now. This isn't a question he needs to ask for him and Sam to be able to figure out what's going on here and stop it. But it is one he needs to ask for himself. "Why? Why me? Out of all the sick people, why save me?"

The reverend pauses for a moment. "Well, like I said before," he answers, "the Lord guides me. I looked into your heart, and you just…" He shakes his head. "You stood out from all the rest."

Dean frowns. "What did you see in my heart?"

"A young man with an important purpose, a job to do. And it isn't finished."

Dean swallows. It's just one of those generic things any fraud worth his salt knows how to say, the type of thing that could apply to just about anybody. He's _supposed_ to think it's meant just for him, that the reverend somehow has some special holy insight into his life, his future. He's _supposed_ to take it as confirmation that his being here, with a healthy, steadily beating heart, instead of dying in some hospital bed, is the way things are meant to be. The will of God, or something like that. But the truth is, the reverend doesn't know anything about him, what job he has to do and whether or not it's finished or ever will be finished. And he certainly doesn't have any right to say that Dean's job, Dean's life, is any more worthy or important than anyone else's.

Dean thanks the reverend and his wife and takes his leave. As he's descending the steps outside the big house, he meets Layla and her mother coming up. Layla smiles at him, and he thinks again how attractive she would be if she didn't look so tired and sad. He can't tell from a glance what's wrong with her mother, but it must be something serious to be taxing Layla so much.

The reverend's wife, Sue Ann, appears at the top of the stairs. "Layla?"

"Yes," Layla sighs, seeming embarrassed. "I'm here again."

"I'm sorry, but Roy's resting, and he won't be seeing anyone else right now."

"Sue Ann, please!" Layla's mother breaks in. "This is our sixth time; he's got to see us."

The reverend's wife smiles sympathetically. "Roy's well aware of Layla's situation, and he very much wants to help just as soon as the Lord allows. Have faith, Mrs. Rourke!"

Dean looks at them in confusion. _Layla's_ situation?

As Sue Ann goes back inside, Mrs. Rourke turns to fix him with a look of such intense indignation that he's momentarily frozen. "Why are you still here? You got what you wanted."

"Mom, stop," Layla says softly.

The woman looks at her daughter, and the seemingly permanent crease in her forehead deepens. "No, Layla, this is too much. We've been to every single service. If Roy would stop choosing these strangers over you, strangers who don't even believe…"

Dean shifts uncomfortably, his eyes on Layla. She turns away, unable to meet his gaze.

"I just can't pray any harder," her mother says, her sour expression doing little to hide the tears behind it.

"Layla, what's wrong?" Dean asks.

She looks back at him, composing herself. "I have this thing…" She shakes her head dismissively.

"It's a brain tumor," her mother cuts in. She moves forward, placing herself between him and Layla as though to protect her from him. "It's inoperable. In six months, the doctors say…"

Layla puts a hand comfortingly on her mother's shoulder.

Dean looks down, unsure what to say beyond, "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," says Layla serenely, looking at him over her mother's head.

"No, it isn't." Mrs. Rourke glares at Dean. "Why do you deserve to live more than my daughter?"

Dean looks back at her helplessly. He watches them walk away, his mind straining to find an answer to her question.

* * *

When Dean gets back to the hotel room, Sam is sitting at the computer, looking like he would like to curl up and disappear. "What'd you find out?" Dean asks him, the words coming out more accusing than he means them.

"I'm sorry," his brother whispers.

"Sorry about what?"

"Marshall Hall died at 4:17."

The room goes cold, and suddenly Dean can't seem to get a breath. "The exact time I was healed," he manages.

"Yeah." Sam stares up at him, his eyes full of guilt. "So I put together a list—everyone Roy's healed, six people over the past year—and I crossed-checked them with the local obits. Every time someone was healed, someone else died." Sam's tone is business as usual, just reporting his research on another hunt, but he looks shaken. "Each time, the victim died of the same symptom Le Grange was healing at the time."

"Someone's healed of cancer, someone else dies of cancer?"

"Somehow, Le Grange is trading one life for another," Sam confirms with a miserable sigh.

"Wait, wait, wait, so…" Dean sits back, trying to process what Sam is telling him. "Marshall Hall _died_ , to save me?"

"Dean, the guy probably would have died anyway, and someone else would have been healed." His brother is grasping at straws, and they both know it. There's no way that fixes this, no possible way of making this okay.

Dean stands, feeling numb, cold. This is worse than how he felt on the grueling twenty-two hour drive over here, with his heart sputtering, barely beating, and his body shivering because he couldn't pump blood fast enough to keep himself warm. At least then he was the one dying for his own stupidity and carelessness. "You never should have brought me here," he tells Sam.

"Dean, I was just trying to save your life!"

"But Sam, some guy is dead now because of me!"

"I didn't know," Sam whispers. As if Dean can forgive him for what he's done just because Sam didn't know he'd be making him a murderer.

* * *

"Okay, then we stop Roy," Dean says. They've been working for hours, turning up every piece of information on reaper lore Dad's journal and the internet can supply. As far as he's concerned, the evidence is conclusive: Le Grange is controlling a reaper and using it to give and take away life. The specifics still aren't clear, but they don't have to be; all they need to know is what they're dealing with and how to stop it.

"How?" Sam asks.

"You know how."

Sam looks at him in disbelief. "Wait, what are you talking about, Dean? We can't _kill_ Roy."

"Sam, the guy's playing God; he's deciding who lives and who dies. That's a monster in my book."

"No, we're not gonna kill a human being, Dean." Sam is looking at him like he's never seen him before, like what Dean is saying is absolutely crazy instead of simply what has to be done. "We do that, we're no better than he is."

Dean looks at his brother, exasperated. The reverend could be conducting one of his black magic healing ceremonies any minute, could be killing another innocent person right now as they speak. And Sam is worried about wasting _him_? "Okay, so we can't kill Roy, we can't kill _Death_. Any bright ideas, college boy?"

Sam looks away in disgust. "Okay, uh, if Roy is using some kind of black spell on the reaper, we gotta figure out what it is. And how to break it."

 _Sure, Sammy. We'll do this your way. Let's see how many more people are gonna have to die while we're being all humane._

* * *

"Layla. Layla Rourke, come up here, child!"

Dean's stomach drops. He was prepared for anything else, to put a stop any other healing, but this woman who's been waiting so long, pinning all her hopes on this very moment, only for him to be the one to dash them…

" _Why do you deserve to live more than my daughter?"_

The sound of clapping fills the tent as Layla stands and embraces her mother. Mrs. Rourke is smiling for the first time since he's seen her, and the worried crease in her brow isn't quite so deep.

Dean hates what he knows he has to do. "Layla!" He grabs her arm as she passes him and whispers to her urgently, ignoring her look of hurt confusion. "Listen to me, you can't go up there."

"Why not? We've waited for months."

"You can't let Roy heal you."

"I don't understand. I mean, Roy healed you, didn't he? Why shouldn't I at least let him try?"

Her words are a punch to the gut. He wishes he had time to explain, wishes he could tell her about the incredible weight of guilt he's carrying on his conscience, the one he's trying to spare her from. But even if he could, she'd never believe him. "Because if you do, something bad is gonna happen. I can't explain, I just need you to believe me. Please." He knows it's weak. If only he can make her decide on her own not to go up on that stage, because if he can't, then he's going to have to resort to more drastic measures, and he doesn't want to do that, doesn't want to be the one standing in the way of her one chance at being saved.

" _Why do you deserve to be healed more than my daughter?"_

He doesn't. He doesn't deserve to live while this woman, this gentle, trusting, pure-hearted woman has to die. He wishes he could take her place, wishes Sam had never brought him here, wishes somehow he could not have Marshall Hall's and now Layla Rourke's deaths sitting on his conscience for the rest of his worthless life.

Sue Ann beckons to Layla, and her mother, still smiling, urges her on. Layla looks back at him, shaking her head. "I'm sorry." She moves past him, nearly running into Sue Ann's embrace as the reverend's wife guides her to the stage.

"Layla!" Dean calls after her in vain.

What about that guy out there in the parking lot, the one Roy has chosen to die in Layla's place? Does he deserve to live more than she does? Dean knows nothing about him other than that he seems to have devoted his life to exposing Roy as a fraud, and that's great, but surely it's not worth as much as Layla's gentle kindness and faith. Maybe just one more healing…

No. He can't play God.

"Fire! Hurry, tent's on fire!"

* * *

As the officers finally release him, he catches sight of a familiar figure. "Layla?"

Her eyes are full of tears. "Why would you do that, Dean? I mean, it could have been my only chance."

"He's not a healer!" says Dean urgently, trying to make her see even though he knows there's no way she can.

"He healed you!"

He stares at her helplessly. "I know it doesn't seem fair. And I wish I could explain, but Roy is not the answer. I'm sorry."

She shakes her head, baffled. "Goodbye, Dean," she says at last. She walks past him, and he stands there numbly, wishing there was something he could say. After a moment, she turns and looks back at him. "I wish you luck. I really do."

"Same to you," he replies, though he knows the words are empty. He can't understand a person like that. To be able to wish him well, honestly and from the bottom of her heart, when he's as good as signed her death warrant—

"You deserve it a lot more than me," he whispers.

* * *

"Dean."

Dean doesn't like that look. That's the _"I know what you're thinking"_ look, and this is not a good time for Sammy to be knowing what he's thinking, because his brother couldn't possibly understand. He'll just give him empty reassurances, which won't mean a thing because the fact is, Sam's okay with the way things turned out. He's glad they didn't know, glad they found out what was going on only after Dean had already been healed. And Dean gets it, because he'd feel the same way if their positions were reversed. But it's still not the same thing, because his little brother actually deserves to still be walking this earth, while he… well, he's done enough things that this earth would do just as well without him. So no matter how you look at it, this is just _wrong_.

"You know, if Roy had picked Layla instead of me, she'd be healed right now."

"Dean, don't—"

"And if she's not healed tonight, she's gonna die in a couple months."

"What's happening to her is horrible. But what are you gonna do, let somebody else die to save her? You said it yourself, Dean: you can't play God."

 _You did. You didn't know it at the time, but that's exactly what you did for me._

Dean's jaw works, but he doesn't say it. He can't do that to Sam. So instead, he opens the car door and climbs out to do what is possibly the most scumbag job he's ever done.

* * *

One by one, the streetlights shut off, darkness closing in on him. Dean turns around, already knowing what he's going to see. The reaper stands before him, gaunt, scarred, and hideous. It advances on him, and he watches it, every instinct in him, both human and hunter, screaming at him to run. He stands his ground. He'll never outrun it, and the truth is, he doesn't want to.

It lays its icy hand on the side of his head, and he grunts in pain as the cold burns through his flesh and deep into his body, freezing his muscles, congealing his blood, slowing his heart to a plodding, irregular rhythm that makes his post-electrocution heartbeat look healthy as an ox. The cold goes straight to his mind, to his soul, and in that frigid darkness he finds one thought: _This is what I deserve._

He didn't run away from the reaper because this is the only way to set the world to rights again. It won't, of course, not completely, because Marshall Hall should still be alive, and there's nothing he can do about that. But he can go and join him, go to the grave where he belongs, and he can keep Layla out of it, because even if she is supposed to die like him, she deserves not to. If it had really been God helping Reverend Le Grange instead of this angel of death, He'd have seen that. Dean's got blood on his hands—had blood on his hands even before Marshall Hall—and he may not be a believer, but he knows enough about the Bible to know that murderers deserve to die.

And anyway, what does he have to live for? Hunting? There are other hunters out there, better ones than him, to carry on the fight when he's gone. Truth is, as important as this job is, that's never been what keeps him going.

What he lives for is his family, and it seems like now, he needs them a lot more than they need him. Sammy must have left fifty messages on Dad's phone between that crappy New York motel and Nebraska, and never once did Dad pick up the phone, not even send a text. It would have been easier to explain it away if they hadn't _just_ heard from Dad—not even a month ago—so they know he's not dead. Because, much as he hates to admit it, Dean can't think of another good reason why Dad would ignore the fact that his son was dying. Which means the only other possibility is that, after everything Dean's done for him, following every order, doing everything he ever asked, Dad just doesn't care. Dean's nothing but a useful soldier who, once his usefulness has passed, can be cut out of Dad's life as easily as Joshua or Bobby or anyone else.

Which leaves Sammy. The one bright spot in Dean's life, the one thing he's always had to live for. At one point, he'd believed himself to be the same for Sammy, but he learned better a long time ago. Sam walked out of his life almost five years ago with hardly a backward glance, and he's only waiting for the chance to do it again. Sure, he came back and saved Dean from that hellish scarecrow, and then made some big long speech about family needing to stick together; sure, he refused to give up on him when the doctors said there was no hope and Dean was fully expecting him to drive out of town without him. But just wait till that demon's out of the picture, till they've finally gotten their revenge, and Dean knows he'll be eating Sammy's dust again in a heartbeat. That's just the way it is. People always leave him, because he doesn't deserve any better.

This is what he deserves. To die so someone better than him can live. To leave this crummy, stinking, miserable life behind and go find whatever peace there might be for him in death. Who knows, maybe he'll even find Mom, and eternity won't be so lonely after all. People can't leave you when they're dead. Can they?

He drops to his knees as blackness starts to swim in front of his eyes. The reaper stands over him, cold, impassive, remorseless. He is nothing to it. Just one life, easily traded for another.

But just before the world goes completely dark, its hand releases him. He falls to the ground, warmth rushing into his body as the world of the living comes back into focus.

* * *

Sammy moves nervously around the hotel room, packing up various weapons and items of clothing, moving things from one spot to another, making up his bed even though he knows a maid will just come to strip it later. All the while, Dean sits, perched on the end of the bed, staring at the floor. He's waiting for the inevitable question, because Sam never can leave him alone, and finally it comes:

"What is it?"

Dean looks up at him. "Nothing." He's stalling, knowing his brother will never accept that answer.

Sam puts his hands on his hips. "What is it?"

Dean sighs. "We did the right thing here, didn't we?"

"Of course we did."

"Doesn't feel like it." Dean looks back at the floor.

Just then, there's a knock at the door. "I got it," Sam says. He opens the door, and Dean hears him say, "Hey, Layla, come on in."

"Hey."

The sweet voice rouses Dean from his malaise, and he stands, surprised. "Hey. How'd you know we were here?"

"Sam called," Layla says, gesturing back at his brother, who's looking just a little too pleased with himself. "He said you wanted to say goodbye."

"I'm gonna grab a soda," Sam says helpfully, already on his way out the door. Dean could just about kill the smug little—

"So, um, where are you going?" Layla asks, moving further into the room.

"Uh, don't know yet. Our work kinda takes us all over."

She nods, seeming unsure what to say next. Finally, she manages, "You know, I… went back to see Roy."

He nods, trying to act as if he didn't already know. "What happened?"

"Nothing," she says, shaking her head. She sits down on the end of the bed, and he sits next to her. "He laid his hand on my forehead, but nothing happened."

He nods. "I'm sorry." _Sorry my brother got there too soon. Sorry I couldn't have died in your place._ "Sorry it didn't work."

She nods, accepting his condolences. She mentions what happened to Sue Ann, and he skirts around it as best he can. Even if he could talk about what happened that night, he doesn't want to. "Must be rough, to believe in something so much and have it disappoint you like that," he says.

She smiles. "You want to hear something weird? I'm okay. Really. I guess if you're gonna have faith, you can't just have it when the miracles happen. You have to have it when they don't."

He looks at her in bewilderment. How? How can a person be so patient, so trusting?

"God works in mysterious ways," she adds after a moment, smiling. It was the first thing she ever said to him. So much has happened since then, so much he can't even begin to make sense of. "Goodbye, Dean." She rises to her feet and heads for the door.

"Hey," he says, standing. "Uh, you know, I'm not much of the praying type, but… I'm gonna pray for you."

She smiles, though there are tears in her eyes. "Well, there's a miracle right there."

* * *

 **A couple of details and lines in this fic were inspired by chrissie0707's incredible tag for this episode, "In the Absence of." The details of Dean's electrocution taking place in New York and the drive to Nebraska thus being around twenty-two hours were hers, and I drew on her story for the details of Dean's condition on the way. I highly, highly recommend your checking out that story; it's an incredible emotional journey.**


	13. She Slipped Away

**Disclaimer: I do not own** ** _Supernatural_** **. No copyright infringement is intended. The title of this chapter is a reference to the song "More Than a Feeling" by Boston. Dialogue in the flashback is reproduced from the episode. Minor edits have been made to remove profanity and for flow.**

* * *

 **MC4A Challenges (Retroactive):** FPC; BAON; NC; SoC; FF; RC **  
Representations:** Sam Winchester; Dean Winchester; Winchester Family; Cassie Robinson; Stubbornness & Pride; Revelations; Lust vs. Love; Loving & Leaving **  
Word Count:** 1032

* * *

 **Tag to Ep. 1x13: "Route 666"**

* * *

She Slipped Away

Sam looks over at his brother in the passenger seat. Dean's not asleep; it'd take a lot more than putting on a pair of sunglasses to fool Sam about that. He listens for a while to Dean's quiet, agitated breathing, wondering if it's worth it to try again. His brother is close-mouthed at the best of times, but this Cassie thing has taken him to a whole new level of uncommunicative. It's lucky Sam knows him so well or he'd never have been able to piece together from all the denials and non-answers what actually happened between Dean and this girl.

Then again, how well does he know his brother, really? Because this is a whole new side of Dean he's seeing, one he had never even imagined existed. Dean—the philandering playboy, the ladies' man, the guy who doesn't need to know much more about a woman than the size of her bust and the shape of her legs before he takes her to bed—is actually, really and truly, in love with a woman. A woman he's evidently been carrying a torch for since early in Sam's college days, so three, maybe four years. The longest he can remember Dean staying interested in one girl is probably a month, and that hasn't been since they were in high school; for Dean to still care for Cassie after four years, even if there were other girls in between… Sam hadn't believed his brother had it in him.

Sam's always been the steady one, the one who has to fall in love with a woman's mind and heart before he ever wants her body. For Dean, mind and heart were always optional features, just distractions from the real prize. Or so Sam had thought. But as much as Cassie has going for her in the sex department, it's obvious that's not what drew Dean to her in the first place, and it's certainly not what brought him back after all this time. That was clear enough the moment they saw each other again. Dean had been awkward and uncertain, without a trace of his usual suave demeanor, as though afraid of making a mistake, of blowing his chance to make things right. The longer Sam watched them, the more convinced he became: the love Dean has for this girl is real. He saw it in Dean's body language when Cassie teared up over her father's death, the way he leaned toward her as though he wanted to comfort her but was afraid of being rejected. He saw it in Dean's eyes as he watched Cassie stand down the mayor and accuse him of racism to his face, bursting with pride and admiration at the woman's courage. He saw it in Dean's tender, slightly protective stance when he sat next to her on the couch, one arm draped across the back, casually offering his strength without needing to touch her. That wasn't lust. That was love.

And suddenly, Sam understands why Dean told her about their job in the first place. It wasn't a drunken slip-up or a reckless mistake. Dean had been serious about this girl, had maybe even thought about marrying her. It's a new thought for Sam, the idea of Dean getting married. Sam is more the marrying type; he'd actually been intending to ask Jess to marry him before she died. He'd even been shopping for a ring. He'd had their whole future planned out, beautiful and simple and _safe_ , and he'd thought his brother would never be able to understand just how much that monster had taken away from him, that their definitions of love were just too different, that Dean would think he should let her go and move onto the next girl. Turns out, maybe their definitions aren't so different after all. Sam can't let go of Jess. Dean can't let go of Cassie.

He thinks about turning the car around, about going back and _forcing_ Dean to try to make it work. He knows his brother wants to; deep down, there's a part of Dean that longs for the apple pie life he pretends to scorn. If Dean lets her slip away now, there's no doubt in Sam's mind that he'll regret it down the road. And yet, Sam keeps driving. Because he heard a lot more of that last exchange between them than he intended, more than he knows Dean would have wanted him to. And what he heard makes him question if staying might not cause more pain in the long run.

" _You know what? I'm a realist. I don't see much hope for us, Dean."_

 _There was a long pause that Sam knew was Dean trying to hide his hurt before he spoke. He wondered if Cassie could hear the traces of it still in his voice when Dean finally said, "Well, I've seen stranger things happen."_

 _Sam waited, willing her to give him some sign of hope. But all Cassie said was, "Goodbye, Dean."_

" _I'll see you, Cassie. I will."_

 _Cassie didn't acknowledge the promise, just went in for a kiss that was more "Goodbye" than "I love you." Sam watched them, his heart heavy in his chest, remembering the way Jess used to kiss him, kisses that said, "I'll never let you go." And she hadn't, not till that demon had snatched her out of his grasp._

 _But here, it was Dean who pulled away, climbed in the car, told him to drive. Cassie didn't watch them out of sight, though Dean's eyes never left the mirror until she disappeared over the horizon._

Sam would like to believe it's just the separation, that if Dean would stay, Cassie would stay. He truly does like the woman; she's a firecracker, more than capable of giving Dean as good as she gets, but there's a soft side to her, too. And most importantly, she makes Dean happy. But Dean deserves someone who loves him as much as he loves her, and Sam just isn't sure Cassie's that person. And so, though his heart aches for his brother, whose breathing is only now starting to settle into the quiet rhythm of sleep, he keeps driving.


	14. Born Liar

**Disclaimer: I do not own** ** _Supernatural._** **No copyright infringement is intended.**

* * *

 **MC4A Challenges (Retroactive):** BAON; ToS; NC; PP; SoC; SHoE; FF; NCR **  
Representations:** Dean Winchester; Sam Winchester; Winchester Family; Saving People, Hunting Things; Liar, Liar; Protection; Stubbornness & Pride; Visions **  
Word Count:** 492

* * *

 **Tag to Ep. 1x14: "Nightmare"**

* * *

Born Liar

Dean lies like he was born to it.

Maybe there was a time, as a very young child, when he was honest with people. He doesn't really remember. There's not a whole lot from those days that has stuck with him: mostly just scattered happy images and that one horrible, horrible memory. All he knows is that for as long as it's been just him, Dad, and Sam, he's been a really good liar. He lied when Sammy asked him whether he'd been scared that night, because no way was his little brother ever going to see him as weak. He lied to Sammy about liking bow-hunting, because if he admitted how boring and pointless he thought it was, Sammy would definitely have decided to go out for soccer no matter what Dad said. He lied to CPS, on multiple occasions, about having a stable, healthy home life, and about that black eye being from a fight at school instead of from Dad throwing him headfirst into a dresser trying to save him from a spirit. He lied about having read that boring text on exorcism Dad assigned him, and then faked it like crazy when it turned out Dad's and Sam's lives might actually depend on him knowing this stuff.

Most of all, he lied about what all this was doing to him. He lied about being okay.

So he doesn't understand why now, of all times, the words won't just roll glibly off his tongue like they're supposed to. _"This doesn't freak me out."_ It's the kind of lie he tells, the kind of lie he's always told: to protect Sam. So why is it so hard this time?

Maybe it's because Sam's asking him to tell the truth. Begging him, really. Because Sam really is freaking out. Seven months ago, _he_ was the normal one, the one who got good grades and had a girlfriend and went to college like your average geeky 22-year-old, while Dean was off chasing demons like some weirdo out of a low-budget horror movie. Now he's having psychic dreams and collapsing zoned out on the floor while he sees murders that haven't happened yet, and all Dean can do is hold onto him and hope he'll snap out of it. No wonder he's freaking out. No wonder they're both freaking out.

But he can't tell Sam that. Somebody's got to be the strong one; somebody's got to keep thinking clearly; somebody's got to at least act like they know what they're doing. And that person—it's always been him. As the older brother, it's his job.

So his jaw works, and his throat closes, and he has to swallow several times before he can speak, but he says it:

"This doesn't freak me out."

There. Another lie. Another time he's protected Sam by doing exactly what Sam wants him not to do. And he's almost positive that this time, Sam sees right through him.


	15. Winchester Rules

**Disclaimer: I do not own** ** _Supernatural_** **. No copyright infringement is intended. Dialogue is reproduced from the episode.**

* * *

 **MC4A Challenges (Retroactive):** BAON; ToS; SIN; NC; LL; SoC; FF **  
Representations:** Dean Winchester; Sam Winchester; Winchester Family; Saving People, Hunting Things; Police Officer; Stubbornness & Pride; College; Emotional Vulnerability; Banter & Teasing **  
Word Count:** 1042

* * *

 **Tag to Ep. 1x15: "The Benders"**

* * *

Winchester Rules

" _Start walking,"_ _she says._ _"Duck if you see a squad car,"_ _she says._ Dean grimaces. He has to remind himself that they owe the lady cop big time for letting them walk away from here at all; what with his stealing a police badge and impersonating a state trooper, she's got more than enough on him to put him away for a while, even if she hasn't already worked out that he's _the_ Dean Winchester, suspected of murder and supposed to be dead. Still, it's hard to feel grateful when his chest is on fire and his left arm hardly seems to have anything to do with him anymore, there's such a wide expanse of pain between him and it. Not to mention that he has no idea when's the last time Sam ate or slept or if he's got enough in him to make it back to civilization. A little help doesn't seem like too much to ask.

Even so, he follows Sam's lead when his brother takes off down the road, setting a slow, easy pace. If they're going to walk till they drop, then they might as well get going.

After a couple minutes of silence, Dean finally says, "Don't ever do that again."

"Do what?"

"Go missing like that."

He can just _hear_ Sam's smug little grin. "You were worried about me."

 _Oh, brother,_ he thinks. _Come on, Sammy; this isn't how you play the game._ Of course Dean was worried about him—he was scared half to death when Sam disappeared out of that parking lot into thin air—but being a Winchester comes with certain rules, and one of the biggest is you don't go all touchy-feely talk-it-out just because one gig happens to suck worse than another. You don't say, _"Do you need help?"_ you say, _"You look like crap,"_ and then you patch up whatever has to be patched up without making a big deal over it. You don't say, _"I was worried about you,"_ you say, _"You ever vanish like that again, I'm not looking for you,"_ and then your brother can call you on your bullcrap, but at least you're not being a pansy about it. You don't say, _"I can't bear to lose you,"_ you say, _"You walk out that door, don't you ever come back."_ And you gamble that they won't go. And sometimes you lose.

Because Sam has never played by the Winchester rules. Dad and Dean, they can hold it all in, play off their feelings with a joke or an insult or, if someone gets too close, an outburst of anger. But Sammy seems to need that emotional vulnerability, just as much as the two of them need to avoid it. It's something Dean learned to put up with; it certainly made taking care of Sammy as a kid easier because unlike Dean, Sam would actually be honest about his needs and fears and hurts. But as he got older, it stopped being just about Sam; somewhere along the line, the kid picked up the idea that his big brother also had needs and fears and hurts, and then he thought Dean should share them with him, too. And when Dean refused, he wouldn't let it go; he started prying, and then, worse, he started guessing. As closed off as Dean tried to be, Sammy knew him too well, and his guesses were often uncomfortably accurate. Soon enough, Dean couldn't break a rib or get turned down by a girl without his kid brother trying to step in and help like it was his job to take care of Dean and not the other way around.

Then Stanford happened. Sammy graduated high school, and suddenly the fountain of sharing and caring dried up and he shut up like a clam. Dad wouldn't let Sam go away to college, and Sam wouldn't give it up. Their family had two volume settings during those days, stony silence and angry shouting, and they could flip the switch in the blink of an eye. And Sam, who could take one look at his brother and know exactly what was going on inside his head, couldn't hear what Dad was really saying: _"Sammy, don't leave. Don't go where Dean and I can't protect you. I already lost your Mom; I can't lose you, too."_ What Sam heard was, _"You walk out that door, don't you ever come back,"_ and he took Dad at his word. He left.

Dean steals a look at his brother. Sometimes Dean wonders if he's too much like Dad, if he'll eventually end up driving Sammy away just like Dad did. The reason Sam hadn't understood what Dad was trying to tell him was that by that point in their lives, Sam just hadn't known him that well; they could hardly be in the same room without one of them trying to start something. In the middle of all that yelling, they'd never learned to listen to each other. That kind of thing could never have happened between Sam and Dean; they knew each other too well.

Only now, after four years apart… sometimes, Dean still isn't sure. Maybe Sammy wants him to actually say, _"Yeah, man, I was worried sick about you."_ Maybe he's supposed to be asking, _"Hey, you gonna make it till we can get you some food?"_ instead of simply watching for any sign Sam's strength might be flagging and keeping an eye out for the first motel or diner or convenience store that comes along.

But that's just not how Dean operates.

"All I'm saying is, you vanish like that again, I'm not looking for you."

"Sure you will."

"No, I'm not."

Sam laughs, and it's the familiar " _I can't believe my brother's such an idiot"_ laugh. And then, "So you got sidelined by a thirteen-year-old girl, huh?"

"Oh, shut up."

"Just sayin', gettin' rusty there, kiddo," Sam tosses back, turning Dean's little jab from earlier back around on him.

Dean looks at him, and it's hard to keep the grin off his face. Because teasing, insults—now Sammy's speaking his language. That's how the Winchester rules work. And that, more than anything else, tells Dean that Sam understands exactly what he means.

"Oh, shut up!"

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 **A/N: I drew some inspiration for this chapter from NoilyPrat's oneshot "Sam's Choice," which shows John's POV of the night Sam left for Stanford. Go and check out her work! :)**


	16. All I Wanted

**Disclaimer: I do not own** ** _Supernatural_** **. No copyright infringement is intended. The title of this chapter is taken from the song of the same name by Kansas. Dialogue is reproduced from the episode. Minor edits have been made to remove profanity and for flow.**

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 **MC4A Challenges (Retroactive):** BAON; ToS; NC; LL; PP; SoC; FF **  
Representations:** Dean Winchester; Sam Winchester; Winchester Family; Saving People, Hunting Things; Stubbornness & Pride; Cracked Facade; College; Choices; Dependence & Independence **  
Word Count:** 1185

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 **Tag to Ep. 1x16: "Shadow"**

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All I Wanted

"Big night," Dean says, loading the shells Sam tossed him into the sawed-off.

"Yeah," Sam agrees. After a pause, he adds, "You nervous?"

Dean looks at him. As if he'd give _that_ one an honest answer. "No. Are you?"

"No! No way."

Dean nods, taking in the way his brother's shifting his weight back and forth, the deep crease in his forehead, the anxious look in his eyes. The kid's wound tight as a spring, and probably scared half to death. Because if Dean is, then Sammy's got to be.

He checks his own body language, relaxes his shoulders, smooths out his brow. Calm. Confident. Determined. Strong. That's the image he's got to project. Sam takes his cues from him; if Dean looks like he's okay, then Sammy will be, too. Doesn't matter if it's a lie, as long as his brother believes it.

"Could you imagine if we actually found that thing, that demon?" Sam says.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves, all right?" Dean cautions. Could be the real thing, could be a false lead like back at the Kansas house, but either way, thinking about it too much ahead of time isn't going to help anything. It'll be the demon, or it won't; and Dad will show up, or he won't. The thing right now is to keep their game faces on.

"I know, I'm just saying what if we did?"

Dean looks up, catching the sudden change in Sam's tone. He doesn't sound nervous, or scared. He sounds almost… hopeful.

"What if this whole thing was over tonight?" Sam goes on. "Man, I'd sleep for a month. Go back to school, just… be a person again."

Dean purses his lips, glaring down at his gun like it's personally wounded him, trying to collect himself. Finally, he manages, "You want to go back to school?"

"Yeah. Once we're done hunting the thing."

"Huh."

"Why, is there something wrong with that?" Sam says defensively.

"No, no, it's, uh—it's great," Dean replies, undoing the straps on his arm holster. "Good for you."

There's an awkward pause before Sam asks, "I mean, what are you gonna do when it's all over?"

"It's never gonna be over." Dean straps on the holster, adjusting it to fit his forearm. "There's gonna be others. There's always gonna be something to hunt."

"But there's gotta be something that you want for yourself."

"Yeah, I don't want you to leave the second this thing's over, Sam!" Dean turns away from him, wondering how this conversation went so wrong. They're getting ready for what might be the biggest hunt of their lives, and they're supposed to be doing it together. Team Winchester, the Dynamic Duo, two brothers working in tandem, ready to take on anything this world or the next can throw at them. And yet here, at this critical moment, all Sam can think about is leaving again.

"Dude, what's your problem?" Sam asks.

 _What's my problem?_ Dean looks at himself in the mirror propped up on top of the dresser in front of him. Sam's off to the side, out of frame, so it's just him, alone. As usual. What's his problem? His problem is that no matter what he does, he always ends up exactly like this. Alone. He lays it all on the line, does everything he knows to do, gives everything he can possibly give, and yet, somehow, he's never enough for the people he cares about most. Dad, Sam, even Cassie—there's always something they want more than they want him, and so when the time comes for them to choose, he gets left out in the cold. Sam asked him what he wants for himself— _Sam_ is what he wants for himself. His family is all he's ever wanted.

There's a right answer to Sam's question. A couple right answers, actually. _"Nothing. I'm fine,"_ would work, for one. It wouldn't satisfy Sam, wouldn't close the subject in the long run, but it might get them out of this awful conversation for the time being. Or an even better one would be, _"My problem is you're too slow, man. Are you ready to go kill this thing, or aren't you?"_ Play it off, shut Sam up, get back to the business at hand.

But he's tired. He's so, so tired of lying, and playing it cool, and being the tough guy. His instincts are screaming at him that Sam's getting too close, that if he doesn't push Sam away _right now_ he's going to get seriously hurt. He knows what Dad would say, because Dad already said it a long time ago: _"You walk out that door, don't you ever come back."_

And that's ultimately the reason why, when he finally turns to look at Sammy, what he says is something else entirely: "Why do you think I drag you everywhere? Huh? I mean, why do you think I came and got you at Stanford in the first place?"

"'Cause Dad was in trouble," Sam says hesitantly, his face full of confusion. "'Cause you wanted to find the thing that killed Mom."

"Yes, that, but it's more than that, man!" _Come on, Sammy. Aren't you're supposed to be some kind of genius? Aren't you're supposed to get me like nobody else does? Can you really be that stupid?_ "You, and me, and Dad. I want us to—I want us to be together again. I want us to be a family again."

"Dean." There are tears standing in Sammy's eyes, and for a second Dean dares to hope that, maybe, his brother isn't about to dash his heart in pieces. "We _are_ a family. I'd do anything for you. But things will _never_ be the way they were before."

"Could be," Dean says with a feeble attempt at a smile.

Sam nods, and Dean can see him working up to saying the words that will crush his soul. "I don't want them to be. I'm not gonna live this life forever. Dean, when this is all over, you're gonna have to let me go my own way."

Dean clenches his jaw, staring into his brother's earnest face. He knows Sam can tell he's hurt him, and he knows he's sorry for it. Just, not sorry enough to take it back. Not sorry enough to change his mind.

 _This,_ he reminds himself, _is why you don't share your feelings._ _This is why you shut up, and you do your job, and you don't let anybody get close enough to see how much you hurt. 'Cause all they ever do is hurt you more._

He picks up his sawed-off from the bed and checks the ammunition, even though he loaded it five minutes ago. He'd like to take his bleeding heart and put a couple of shells through that, put himself out of his misery. Who knows, if Sammy takes off again in a few days, maybe he still will. But in the meantime, he's got a demon to hunt.

"Come on, Sam," he says, lifting the barrel of the shotgun till the break closes with a click. "Let's go."


End file.
